Although I’m a D/D main, I run S/D in dungeons. It’s just superior in terms of damage vs. survivability vs. team buffing with very low risk to yourself if you position correctly. It also stacks AoE might better than any other weapon set; your team will melt everything if you play correctly.
-Longbow’s only AoE is limited to 5 hits per second whereas a lot of other aoe skills have many small hits that give them the potential to hit many times.
-Longbow’s damage is only decent when under the effects of high amounts of might and/or quickness. Longbow lacks any decent spike damage without meeting either of these conditions, as it has no specific bursting skill.
-Longbow’s auto attack damage calculator is counterintuitive to basic gameplay because of flight speed.
-Longbow’s only inherent pet synergy is application of swiftness.
-Longbow’s lack of any form of basic condition damage means you are essentially burning an entire weaponset for mediocre utility if you are not using it to burst.
Longbow’s list goes on..
Main problems with rangers is not that they are inherently weak by design; there are some issues with pet pathing/aggro AI, lack of viable traits within certain lines, and a number of bad utilities. Aside from that the only gripe I have is a few of their weapons being lackluster (GS, LB)
They don’t keep their current recharges when swapping back; that was a UI bug that was fixed in an unannounced mini-patch. I think there is a happy medium that can be reached; perhaps decreasing the out-of-combat recharge to 10 so as to cause less handicap to rangers while still keeping them from stacking excessive boons.
Provided the BM ranger knows how to avoid trap damage, it will probably win imo.
0/10/10/20/30
S/D with Sigils of Force/Accuracy and Energy
Runes optional (Divinity is my default)
Bolt to the Heart or Zephyr’s Focus
Obsidian Focus
Cleansing Wave, Cantrip Mastery
Elemental Attunement, Vigorous Scepter, Evasive Arcana
Once you get more used to the setup you can compress your endurance regeneration by removing Zephyr’s Boon/Vigorous Scepter and just grabbing Renewing Stamina.
5-9: Ether Renewal, Mist Form, Lightning Flash, Cleansing Flame/Armor of Earth.
Get extra armor while attuned to Earth, while Earth 2 is active, and while channeling skills. Make sure to stack might properly when cycling through Fire/Earth so that your damage is adequate. The armor bonus when you meet all these conditions is comparable to the base toughness you get with P/V/T gear, though it’s not quite as much, and your damage will be more than respectable.
(edited by Leuca.5732)
I know what you mean, mostly a wvw’er myself!
I had a week long “debate” with a new guild mate who kept insisting on a condition build for staff. Try as I might to talk some sense into him he finally admit after having spent maybe 40G on gear that I was right all along…
Condition builds on staff are actually quite good because they tie into some of the ele’s most survivable traitlines/stats to boot. It’s a different approach but it’s definitely possible. Eles make up for the lack of condition variety with frequency of application (when played properly) and can beat up condition mesmers and necros remarkably well.
I run 0/20/0/20/30 while using D/D and 0/10/10/20/30 on S/D for power-based builds respectively. S/D has this great ability to absorb almost as much damage as a Valkyrie D/D while using a Berserker amulet.
Ranger traits just make my brain hurt.
RaO was really fun in GW1. It worked great with daggers, swords, hammers, scythes, almost anything really.
Don’t underestimate long-lasting burning application with point-blank Fire 5. If you can afford to get in the enemy’s face before using it I recommend doing so.
It already helps the Ranger. It lets the pet do more damage, which helps the player.
I think having a very powerful effect like 6 seconds of Stealth to the player would make the Jaguar too good and almost required.
It would also require an entire rework of pet F2 mechanics. The ranger community is barely able to contain people telling us that the recharge reset on swap is OP.
The only thing I can support is a possible reduction in AoE size and/or frequency. The fact is that the community is not being encouraged to avoid obviously telegraphed attacks; this is a terrible bandaid for a more serious underlying problem.
I’ve also noticed a 10 second cooldown on Sigil of Purity, that wasn’t there before.
Sigil of Purity has had the 10s recharge for months now.
All they have to do is make the drakes follow their f2 target like eles do while channeling Fire 2 and Water 2 on d/d.
I’m still confused as to why anybody would encourage nerfing AoE as a whole when the problem is people ignoring telegraphed skills.
This happened to me on my elementalist. The issue somehow resolved itself mid-match and I’m not sure what happened to begin with.
I’m liking the ability to choose when I leap, but the leap itself is slow and awkward now, so I’m really never bothering to use it unless I’m going through a field.
The most recent update following the big 28th patch seems to have either partially resolved the problem indirectly or a hotfix was implemented that was not mentioned. The pet still seems a bit laggier than before the 28th when it comes to F2 but seems to be doing regular actions a bit better. How’s everybody else?
The issue for me has been mostly with F2 activation, but pets seem to be slower than before at re-targeting revealed enemies as well.
I don’t feel like I’m imagining this; my pets do not seem to be responding as quickly after swapping, and some f2 abilities seem to be activating even less reliably than before.
Is anybody else having this issue?
The splitting of MG into 2 moves was a great decision, but now you get stunned for 1 sec guaranteed instead of 0 to 3 seconds before the patch. Most of the times you will not want to use the pull because it’s so slow.
I agree. Give it a set max-range that is easy to visually understand, and make the flight time comparable to other gap-closers. It’s a very interesting/fun concept but it does feel a tad awkward.
I confirm that the ability icons show as if the ability is still on cooldown, but they’re still clickable nevertheless.
This makes me doubt exactly what Anet’s intention is.
A fix to our “broken” pet recharge mechanic would also require a complete overhaul to the base recharges of the pet’s entire bar
When professions leave forms that have changed their skill bar or removed it, it triggers effects like SIgil of Battle. Mist Form, Tornado, Ride the Lightning on Ele just as an exmple. Is this intended?
What are you guys even talking about? Pet swapping is resetting F2 skills just like it always has, for me.
i’m guessing ur using cats or birds?
I use a wolf and a bird. The wolf’s fear resets on every swap, just as it always has. Are you guys just making things up to insult ArenaNet, at this point? >.>
The visual icon for the cd on wolf fear seems to be keeping the recharge it had before/after swap, but I can still activate the skill, causing the recharge to reset when it’s still going. On another note, my canine pets now seem to be using their KD on golems, without trying to “interrupt” an action.
If you’re running atleast 15 points in Nature, Warhorn is vital.
I’m not sure how good dagger is for power/crit build, for all I know it could actually do a lot of base damage.
I know its Conditions are excellent though.
The dagger is good for snaring/heal control. With S/D you can keep poison on your target constantly while you harass them with sword spikes and rather frequent cripples from sword 2 and dagger 5. A lot of rangers running power spec high into wilderness survival, giving your heal control an ok damage boost.
True AoE abilities are often telegraphed very obviously; the problem with those is the population’s tendency to not try to avoid damage before it happens. The main problem with AoE for me is the number of regular attacks that have the ability to “cleave.” These are not telegraphed nearly as well and often don’t make sense. Single target abilities should be improved and the number of cleaving abilities should be reduced.
Staff is actually a great weapon for applying easily-disguised condition damage, particularly in frequent application of strong burning with bleeding bursts. Burning does a lot more damage than people give it credit for, and the ele’s inherent ability to stack might on pretty much any weapon set without traiting for it means you can do about 600 damage per second+any landed bleeds with Eruption+Evasive Arcana+any ambient aoe damage that’s coming from your attacks. The best part is that these condition-based builds synchronize extremely well with your most defensive specs, giving you decent offensive power while retaining your strong support ability as an elementalist. The staff’s biggest weakness at the moment is not really its damage capability but its relatively poor single-target CC in comparison to the sheer number of ground-targeted/slow activating skills. However, it’s great for hitting a concentrated spot or defending a capture point.
Could not agree more. The only thing I can think of that I dislike about the chain aside from the #2’s range is the lack of responsiveness to dodging, but I make due with removing auto attack and manually keying it when I spike, which works out fine and really throws people off.
For a sustained power/BM build I prefer dagger, but a higher self-based damage power/crit would benefit more from warhorn.
There’s a huge issue with traps (which are condition damage) being traited with a line that has nothing to do with that form of damage aside from a few minor effects that are pretty negligible in the long run. I think it would be a better idea to get the majority of our traits at a viable level and in the correct lines before we adjust where they are., not to mention that this process will actually probably help your issue as well.
There, fixed that.
Actually, Dante was pretty spot on; the two strongest specs for ranger are condi and evasion tank, and your ability to branch from the basic stats required to run them is extremely limited. Sure, you can change your amulet and say that you’re running something completely different, but that’s pretty disingenuous. The majority of our pets are useless; the “pet fix” update was a complete joke on top of that, so it didn’t even increase viability for the ones that were never used to begin with.
Rangers cannot run cannons without sucking balls, their CC is workable but pales in comparison to other roamers, and their bunkering ability can’t even be justified because their ability to buff allies is garbage. Good players make the ranger look viable from an in-the-moment standpoint, but actually looking at the abilities granted to us and the pets that are actually used in higher level play reveals a lack of variety of self-sufficient synergy that’s pretty laughable.
The problem is access to healing rotation/might stacking, though might stacking is an almost global problem in the game. Our 5th slot heal skills need to be better, and our healing rotation needs to be toned down. A few actual water attunement skills could be buffed to compensate. This would reduce the number of AoE heals we pump out while increasing our survivability through proper usage of #5.
Then again, you could just ask that they revisit the ele’s design completely. How could they not see what would happen when they give a low armor/low hp class access to some of the best healing in the game?
Nothing of sort should be done, the real problem is the cleric amulet build which allows people to stack up healing power and boon duration, they should simply switch the 15% boon duration to rune 6 bonus so that people can’t reach 80% boon duration and remove toughness of power from the cleric amulet…even better make the air trait : zephyr’s boon a master trait -problem solved
The Cleric Amulet wouldn’t be so OP with some professions if their base healing ability wasn’t so strong to begin with. You can stack toughness all you want; if you aren’t putting out some kind of sustained healing you will eventually die to damage.
The problem is access to healing rotation/might stacking, though might stacking is an almost global problem in the game. Our 5th slot heal skills need to be better, and our healing rotation needs to be toned down. A few actual water attunement skills could be buffed to compensate. This would reduce the number of AoE heals we pump out while increasing our survivability through proper usage of #5.
Then again, you could just ask that they revisit the ele’s design completely. How could they not see what would happen when they give a low armor/low hp class access to some of the best healing in the game?
You only have to stay in earth long enough to stack 6+ bleeds (two auto attacks) for it to be completely worth it damage-wise. Remember that S/D stacks might just through basic combo rotation, which will increase your condition damage as well as regular damage. Your burns will do more than 600 per tick and bleeds will easily get past 110. This translates into about 2k damage for every successful full auto attack in earth and 7k aoe damage for churning earth. You don’t even have to put effort into the burning since you should be executing a combo on the person closest to the center of your point each time you cycle through fire. Your fire dodge will do about 3k+ damage on top of that if it goes full duration.
There’s a lot to be said for condition eles; not in the variety of conditions they apply, but in the frequency of application of two strong conditions.
Hint: Stop it with the Cleric Amulets. They changed equipment swapping outside of combat to really make you think about how to pack the most punch into what you are using. Try using a Shaman Amulet with ___+Energy sigils.
two builds that i use:
20/30/0/0/20, berseker/soldier’s gear, LB/GS/cats. used for long range sniping and sieges.
0/10/30/10/20, clerics gear, GS/sword/dagger/birds. used for skirmishing, taking points, bunkering in smaller engagements.both builds have amazing burst. a note on pets. you dont need 30 in BM. Natural Healing sucks, and the extra 10 points are usually better spent elsewhere. also, no need to go 30 into marks. just go to 20 for piercing arrows. skirmishing is essential for LB builds for the LB CD reduction (more rapid fire, more barrage), and the crit.
runes for the top build should be Thief for precision and additional dmg while flanking. cheap too. runes for my bottom build should be Dwayna for healing.
I find Natural Healing to be very useful for the purposes of keeping my pet alive when I have it fighting something in the distance or targeting a siege weapon, especially because I like to run with canines; their high toughness makes it really add up; the slight self regen really doesn’t hurt either, I also like the 25 BM trait because I like to stack some healing power on top of traits as well. In my SPvP build for instance I have almost 2200 power with only 10 in Marksmanship.
Empathic removal says, “Pets periodically take conditions from you.” However, this is not what occurs. Instead the conditions just vanish. The conditions are not transferred to the pet.
So what’s it supposed to be?
Honestly, I think the pets should take the conditions. Because rangers are a bit OP in the right hands.
This makes the trait conceptually fair, but the fact that you don’t have a way to cure your pet of conditions aside from using Healing Spring makes this a win-lose situation. The fact that there are no pets that were designed to absorb that kind of damage except for bears (which have garbage damage/utility otherwise) is another point to consider. Making Empathic Removal work as was apparently intended means a pet rework will have to take place as well.
If ranger condition removal wasn’t gimped without HS/ER this issue wouldn’t have existed in the first place.
Imo you should be able to do these things without the clever finger work.
Needs to be on necro/engi/both. No other professions have any need for it, but the monopoly mesmers have on the portal ability pigeonholes them into this role during tournament play.
I’ll have to agree with Berengar. Force+Battle is a very strong combination for d/d ele.
- 5 axe should be a big damage punishing skill like Warriors and their Hundred Blades. Not quite as bursty, but its current function is subpar.
Hey, this is a question I ask a lot of good ele player:
What does it take to make DPS Staff ele viable in spvp.? Doesnt have to be the glass one with Berserker but the standard one with Valkyrie or Soldier. I know it is pretty bad right now so what changes do you think would help?
Thanks ahead Powerr.
You are better off running a Shaman amulet and farming people at cap points. Staff condi completely outdoes power unless you are complete berserker stats with max fire magic/air magic, which is completely unjustifiable with the survivability you sacrifice. Get 7-8k worth of bleeds per person hit by Eruption and you’ll see what I mean.
I actually quite enjoy it on my wolf; it sets up melee spikes almost as well as immobilize.
Necro: Necrotic Void (portal skill)
Mesmer: Signet of Inspiration – Passive: 25% movement speed increase; Active: Grant a random boon (Protection 3s, Regeneration 10s, Swiftness 10s, Fury 5s, etc) to yourself and nearby allies. (Activation: 1/2s; Recharge: 40s)
Just an idea.
This is what happens when people get kitten over taking damage when they try to absorb it instead of avoid it. The attacks are telegraphed so obviously for a reason. Half the reason people die is because they aren’t paying attention to what’s going on around them.
It wouldn’t be for no reason, it’d make our tanky supporty weapon (i mean seriously, it is tanky, it doesn’t do kitten for damage when compared to any of our other weapons, and it has pretty much only control moves) fill its slot perfectly, as everyone here said, GS is lacking something, whether it’s damage, more control w/e. It’s missing something, and this blast finisher would put it in a place where it’d just be a really solid weapon and it wouldn’t need to be touched for a while, i -doubt- they’d nerf the CD on the sword, if anything they’d increase the time it takes for maul to go off.
And increasing the activation time for maul would make an already obvious attack even easier to avoid. It telegraphs really obviously already. That’s why I think a slight damage or bleed increase with either might application to you/your pet/both or a different pet synergy would be easier to keep balanced.
Because people get scared when you burst them with quickness 1H sword and your pet joins in. Plus you look like a psychopath.
I displayed that title before entering a SPvP match once and actually had somebody run from me and say “WTF ASCENDANT” in chat.