Guild Wars 2

SobeSoul.6910:

BlackTruth.6813:

Did you brag about your build or what? Because if you didn’t do anything wrong then that’s kinda screwed up.

Fox bans any build he cannot beat with some excuse of they wanting it to simulate real encounters.

Also on their rules page it says » This arena is designed to practice against viable team builds in tpvp.

That’s funny considering 80% ish of the builds they force with all those rules will never be seen in tPvp lol

I was really excited to see a new koth room open especially with tournaments since the other one is so incredibly restrictive. Also I love your new thief build too!

However I then checked your rules and it’s almost the same thing as the other room from what I remember :x

I understand all the rules, like the no bunker amulets (you forgot sentinel on your list I think?) but let me talk about your mesmer class specific rules just as an example, because class specific is where it starts to get annoyingly restrictive IMO

Mesmer: No Restorative Mantras trait- really? I don’t know anyone that uses this, but is this going to make a non-bunker mesmer into AIDS?

Mesmer: No Prismatic Understanding trait – this one everyone agrees with

Mesmer: No similar Prismatic Understanding permanent protection variants (I.E. 3 in Chaos, 3 in Inspiration)- that adds up to like 3 seconds of prot every 15 seconds, is that going to turn the mesmer to AIDS? :/ Fine if you think so, but you’ve just banned any build passed 3 points in those lines (because they are minor). That’s annoying.

Mesmer: No Phantasmal Defender utility- I can understand this

Mesmer: No Phantasmal Disenchanter utility- I CAN’T understand this- at all.

Mesmer: No Phantasm Mesmer- This one is a bit iffy, what exactly are you considering a phantasm mesmer? Are we banned from picking ANY phantasm traits at all? For example I believe many shatter mesmers pick the phantasmal fury for the GS phantasm. If all phant traits are off limits, that’s pretty annoying.

Anyways that’s just my two cents, I’m happy someone is making a new room but I hope you choose to lower some of those class based restrictions as some don’t make sense IMO

@ the condi cover vs spam re-application argument, I also just realized that entangle itself works against condi covering as it will push all your bleeds to the front 5 times in 5 seconds as it applies the bleeding 1 by 1.

so to go all out condi cover I’ve had to not use entangle in my bleed bomb or it all gets wasted because entangle is a pretty big " i’m in trouble" animation that will trigger most people to cleanse it immediately. The bleed on being hit bonus on krait also brings the stacks to the front of the cleanse list.

so…yeah >< lol I dunno if I think hiding is better than spam reapplying, still trying to decide

A bit of testing with trying to hide bleed stacks vs spam reapplying is that I needed to give up krate to make it work, but nightmare is fine IMO, also had to go for 2 into BM instead of the usual marks or skermishing setup because the randomness of those bleeds could mess up the hiding. I also couldn’t put geomancy on the s/t set.

it’s alot more survivable because of using settlers, and kills wonderfully fine, but going through all that trouble to hide the bleeds I’m finding that once I’ve gone through my rotation, my bleeds are nowhere to be found XD IE they cleansed before I even got to my 2nd or third cover condi. This happens alot and seems to make it all pointless haha. Any opinions?

Thanks for testing things for us <3 I would hope that all condi clear worked the same way aside from ones that clear specific condi only like thief healing skills. But I wouldn’t be surprised if ANET made it super complicated.

So if I am to understand you correctly, if theoretically I used dagger 5 -> axe 2 for bleeds first, then stacked up poison/weakness/chill etc for covering, switched for burn, but I use sharpening stone at the end, it pushes all my beautiful bleed stacks to the front of the cleansing list ? (really annoyed that it doesn’t visibly show on the bar >.> It was like that in Aion which is why I excepted it here)

If that’s the case you just made me have to re-learn to play condi ranger lol

edit: this also poses issues with entangle and krait and sharpening stone trait, are we sure that hiding is better than spam reapplying?

Eurantien.4632:

If you use geomancy then when at the swap your combo reapplies bleed at the end which pulls ALL the bleed stacks you put on back to the top of the clear list… which means you end up with virtually no damaging conditions on your enemy. So that’s why you don’t use geomancy on that set. You can use it on a/d because your are gonna be applying bleeds there anyway, before you try to cover them. T

Does this work differently on players and svanir in the mists? I just tested it on svanir and geomancy doesn’t push the bleeds to the front o.O As long as I keep the bleed up, and it’s not cleansed, it stays at the back through any kind of reapplication

shimmerless.4560:

Entangle doesn’t bother me that much (although I’ll go to bat for VeeWee here and say that it does disproportionately shaft Engineers). What does grind my gears though is that rune set that dumps a bunch of AIDS on elite use. Rune of the Krait or something? That becomes a lot more frustrating because you end up with a set where the biggest threat is entirely from runes and sigils.

Condi ranger is one of my primary classes and I could agree that entangle + krait is an overpowered combination, especially against classes with difficulty against immob, and I understand where the engi is coming from. It’s frustrating to go against a counter like condi ranger is to engi, however it’s not NEARLY as severe as say a thief going up against a medi guard IMO. Every class has counters and I don’t honestly see anyone being wrecked by my entangle often, they most of the time are out of it within the first seconds I used it on them because they save their skills for when it comes like I do with lightning reflexes against other rangers.

This all being said, I could go for a fix on entangle + krait only when rangers get other things that push them into the meta. You can’t just nerf one of our best abilities when we are already struggling to fit in. And I hope the OP was complaining about entangle on condi rangers that have krait, b/c entangle on power rangers is completely fine.

Alright let me break this down a bit; and let me preface by saying that the build you posted was for WvW right? What I am about to say only pertains to sPVP as I don’t WvW and have no experience with it.

@Prysin

To your first block of comments regarding signet of stone and the like, I agree it’s not good to rely on them and can indeed carry you falsely. That being said, it does not negate their usefulness in the slightest. I personally take Sharpening stone (because of the GM trait in my build ) over SoS, however if I didn’t have at least 1 skill of active defense on each weapon set, I’d use stone to compensate.

Moving on, @ “That being said, might stacking with torch 5 and warhorn is inefficient and bad. While you cannot sustain more then 15 stacks of might without blasting, you cannot hope to maintain a solid defense with it.”

I just got a look at your build you posted earlier and I can’t fathom some of the strange things you chose on it. GS….? GS over sword/torch for a might stacking build makes no sense at all, in terms of both defense and damage and might stacking and mobility. You could make the argument that taking HORN is inefficient and bad, but when you’re taking horn already and you don’t take torch…? I am completely baffled.

Your last problem is you are putting too much focus on the pet. It just doesn’t work in this game. You are underestimating your own damage potential when you have the defense of cele + a steady 15+ stacks of might. Your build ha minimal condi- axe 2 and the chance to bleed on crit trait. That is -nothing- compared to what you could be outputting and you’re wasting your cele 430 + another 400 + condi damage.

Having a pet hit like a truck is a secondary advantage to this, but it is too unreliable to function which is why NO ONE runs BM builds. Sic your pet onto someone who is moving ever so slightly (100% of people in pvp) and watch it struggle to land anything. Not to mention, if someone with the slightest bit of sense realizes your pet is the source of your damage and then kills them both and you’re out of luck.

Those are my two cents. Might stacking on Ranger can work and be effective, but it’s not gonna make the meta scene currently IMO.

No defense on your weapons at all, and no signet of stone, no vigor traits, which means all you have is LR and dodges…that seems like a sitting duck build >< Imagining fighting a shatter mesmer with that gives me chills lol. It seems like less damage and less survivability to me :x But atleast you have interrupts with the dogs.

I tested this in sPVP. Might on myself was easily kept around 15-20 and 20-25 on the pet via a pretty simple rotation. Used blast finisher from pets and my horn and also leap for the aura.

The good: Might can easily shoot up to 20 in a few seconds and be maintained pretty easily. You are beefy and sustainable and so is your pet. You have plenty of condi removal. Access to swiftness is also nice

The bad: no defense on the axe/horn setup and I HAD to use horn to make this work because with dagger I didn’t get enough might. However since the buff to horn and torch, the rotation is much smoother than it was previously (I had tried might stacking for a long time now). After the initial pet swap for double blast, mid fight the drakes cannot be controlled for the blasts; I hardly ever see it happen mid fight and its impossible to time it well without losing focus on fighting, However, I still can maintain plenty of might despite this. Absolutely NO access to interrupts. This is a big big downfall IMO. Watching my teammates die when running this was frustrating.

Anyways let me know what you guys think. I think that both the power and condi options listed as “great” builds on metabattle are probably better than might stacking on ranger. But I dunno

The build I tried:

I use 00662 Wilderness knowledge, offhand training, poison master-nature’s bounty, evasive purity, SoF- mighty swap.

double battle, 1 doom and 1 geomancy- strength rune and cele amulet

utilitys are MT LR and SS with entangle ofcourse, and healing spring

I used axe/horn sword/torch and double drakes

Why did you replace Spring with troll?

I wouldn’t go with the torment sigils if you’re going sw/t/a/d, even with switching to rabid I think it’s too low a crit chance given that half the time you’re dancing around defensively instead of say pewpewing with a shortbow, but I dunno. I think leeching might be better, or energy.

I would change your Lynx out for that ugly hound dog for the immobolize; the more trapping on the bonfire the better.

I would lastly change to Krait runes and drop Sharpening stone for hunt, if you’re wanting mobility; I think the krait runes are especially important on this melee kind of build.

Those are just my thoughts, I’m certainly no expert though- but my build is pretty much identical to yours aside from those changes. As for rabid vs settlers, I have no idea which is better; guess is depends on what your goal is, but I think that the crit on rabid is absolutely not needed if you’re not running sb in your condi build, but again I really don’t know any of this for sure

As said before, Thieves hard counter glass Mesmers (don’t they hard counter glass any class? lol) whether they be shatter or phantasm or whatever, even when playing Pyro’s phant dueling spec a good thief can easily win I find, because they can literally negate your damage by killing the phantasms the second they spawn even with full phantasm buffs, and phant is not viable in tpvp regardless.

Back on topic about what beats one 1v1, the only class I’ve consistently lost to unless I got lucky is one of those glassy thieves. Granted I don’t know much about them but I find it hard to believe it’s a l2p issue (though it could be, but phantasm mesmer isn’t exactly requiring of much skill) when I’m dead in a few seconds, after burning through all my active defense.

As soon as you try and gain distance with blink they are up your kitten hole again lol, and I’m always dead after I only get 1 phantasm out.

Anyways this is coming from an spvp PoV, maybe they aren’t such a challenge in WvW? If I see them coming I stand a chance, but if they sneak up on me or catch me with CDs up it’s an auto lose, being the glassy kitten I am in berserkers.

I’m a little confused about the retal nerf in WvW to Spvp levels, as I don’t play Wvw, but I thought there was no difference previously?

Also yeah I had swapped out mirror images a while ago for one of our condition removing skills because I didn’t feel like in Spvp mirror images was helping all that much, and I felt I needed the extra condition help because whirl finisher isn’t always on demand. So for tpvp the switch is a no brainer, but for Wvw where melandru’s + food makes conditions a non issue, I’d have a tougher choice on what to replace mirror images with

I only play Tpvp and yeah confusion sucks ;-; Sorry to hear they’re gonna kill it for you in WvW too

Yeah I run a BM Bunker power build very similar to this, but change a few things. Now I’m not expert by any means, only rank 22, so I’d like your opinions on the things I changed;

I drop the points in skirmishing, even though I know it hurts the bird’s dps, however I find without 30/10/30’s empathetic bond you are serious kitten against a condition build; hell, even with empathetic bond + healing spring I’ve still been hit hard by conditions in sPvp.

I also take oakhart salve over the -20% gs and sword reduction

The main question I have is Nature’s Bounty Vs Nature’s Protection. Obviously 33% healing duration is awesomesauce, but I feel like I have enough regen already with oakheart salve, and dwaynas, the signet, and natural healing from BM 30 etc, where the extra protection from Natures protection just seems better; but I’m still nooby so I could be completely stupid and wrong on this one. Any opinions?

Also utilities: I choose hunt over muddy terrain, though I love muddy terrain, I can’t switch hunt out for anything since I lack horn with s+dagger. Also all of our elites are good but after perfecting the auto rez (not to mention group rez utility) of the spirit, I chose that over entangle or rampage as one because, as I used to run rampage as one, I find that if I didn’t have the DPS to get a bunker down without that utility, I wasn’t going to get him down with it in time regardless if the enemy knew what he was doing.

I’d love to hear other ranger’s thoughts, because I’m still new so I’m not completely confident in my choices

edit: this is purely from tpvp point of view, I don’t wvw

Yeah good point, I’m definitely not utilizing the whirl finisher enough, I just need to get better at that. Thanks for the help

Any ideas for tPvp optimization? I’m still relatively new so I’m not sure if what I’m doing is kitten or not, but I’ve traded off mirror images with the condition removing mantra to help with the conditions in tPvP since melandru’s alone isn’t shining without your WvW other buffs.

I’ve also thought about replacing melandru’s altogether, but I don’t know. That’s all I could come up with, any ideas Pyro? Or would you say the WvW build you posted is still optimized for tPvp?