Guild Wars 2

kiwituatara.6053:

I see. Thanks for the feedback!

I’ve never really liked trap rangers though. Generally they need 30Skirmishing and it just costs too much.

Also, I’ve never gotten round to understand things like Torch5

Damage (8x): 288
Burning (1.5sec) : 4,926 damage
Duration: 8 sec

So its an 8 second fire field that pulses a 288 damage every second while dealing burning damage. So exactly how much burning damage are you getting? And what does “Burning (1.5sec) : 4,926 damage” mean?

Edit: Actually nvm. I think I understand now. I don’t think I’ll need the sun spirit and flame trap for 100% burning uptime. Sigh~ was trying to find a good build that actually uses spirits =/

Yeah torch with offhand training and condition duration food is plenty of burning, throw torch alone is an 8 second burn on a 12 second cooldown. What flame trap and sun spirit do is it allows you to use weapon combos that don’t have torch and still get burning.

Thats pretty much what i used in this vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkvJQNVbT_M

Spirits aren’t bad but they just don’t compare with Bm or trapper unless your rolling with a group. Also you don’t want to stack too much burning, if you have 100% uptime than anything more is a waste unless people are spamming condi removal. Remember, sun spirit will proc burning for both you and your pet.

Its the zergling tactic. In 1vX whoever is getting targeted will run around kiting while the others pew pew.

yeah I saw that looking forward to the next few patches hopefully a lot of new builds will become viable.

Im not really concerned anymore. Was just just watching a tpvp stream and Jon said that every trait line is getting at least one change, some as much as five. Im sure other stuff will be changed to compensate since they are trying to increase build diversity.

Lol have you not seen all the qq on the forums about bm rangers?

I doubt anything will get buffed to compensate. Jon said “they are more sustainable now, they can actually stay in fights longer, the damage will be coming down.” So i guess the reason the damage is getting nerfed is because they got a few extra k hp last update.

your gs has hax

Forzani.2584:

Can’t buy Forge Runes in market ?

Nope. They are from the the dredge dungeon Sorrow’s Embrace, you can buy them for 120 tokens each.

hyjaxxx.1584:

but if you run undead you can have 2000 toughness, 1800 condi dmg,1300 healing.

with dwayna you get an ally regen on heal…that you get anyways with spring..unless im missing something

Yeah dwayna + healingspring doesn’t get as much hp/s as TU because regen stacks duration, but you still get that heal just over a longer period of time.

Since your running with a group you have to think of the heals healing spring can bring through combos. You can use sword 2 to leap through it for extra heals, and if you have a hammer guard or shortbow thief in your group they can spam blast finishers in it for good Aoe heals. If you coordinate with your group well healing spring can put out some crazy healing.

hyjaxxx.1584:

well i changed up to 0-0-30-10-30 and it seems good.

My main issue im having now, is since im going to run Spring over Ungent should i get rid of my dwayna runes and go back to undead…if i go back to undead i can get 1900 cond damage. this seems to be my last main hurdle to figure out.

They are both really cheap you could try them both and test them out.

When using undead see if you feel you have enough survivability, and see if you have problems putting out enough damage using dwayna runes. Basically undead for extra offense or dwayna for extra defence.

Faux Sheaux.6179:

Hah, wow. I never really did the math on that before, but seeing it here now, I’ll agree. You’re absolutely right. I edited that bit out of my post. Touche, good sir.

I still stand by what I say about the crit damage versus pet speed though.

They are both great traits. I personally like the speed boost because I don’t use hunt and feel like cats have a harder time hitting moving targets than other pets. If you can keep your target snared or use signet of the hunt than the extra speed boost is useless and pets prowess is definitely the way to go.

Da kitten Dee kitten Da Teetley Derpee Derpee Dumb

Furajir.3815:

I need a math person to work it up for me, is it worth getting/keeping? How many extra dodges am I looking at with TU?

Energy regen is 5%/s by default and 10%/s with vigor. 5 seconds of vigor will give you an extra 5%/s for five seconds for a total of 25% extra endurance or half a dodge roll. TU is on a 25s cd so thats one extra dodge every 50s.

If you have natures vigor you regen at 7.5%/s by default, and since it does not stack with vigor you are only getting an extra 2.5%/s for five seconds or 12.5% total. Thats one extra dodge every 1min 40s.

Furajir.3815:

I’m actually contemplating dropping the 10 in skirm with pets prowess and dumping into NM for Natures Protection, would help eliminate a lot of the burst I have to endure.

Yep the protection is amazing. I know for a fact that the thief at 13:00 is full gc with atleast 105% crit damage, and he couldnt get me past 50% hp in three burst attempts while i took that camp and killed the warrior.

hyjaxxx.1584:

ok…i need something clarified. why do people run troll Ungent over healing spring?

Personal preference. Both have their strengths and weaknesses, I personally use healing spring 90% of the time.

Zenith.7301:

Most BM bunkers I know from tpvp don’t run more than 20 in BM. The healing from natural healing is actually pretty marginal when you could get prot on being crit for better anti spike measures or sharing boons with the pet. Or you could get those points and put them in skirmishing.

I also have some hesitation with forge runes because it’s a whopping 60 sec cd triggered randomly when you might actually not need it. Most fights I get in are protracted and resets happen often, in which case you only get some extra toughness most of the time and that’s it.

I run either Dwayna runes or the undead runes for more offensive variants. If I were to give up undead runes I’d easily be giving up around 300 condi damage stat, and quite frankly the only tradeoff that justifies it is Dwayna runes’ survivability boost.

Most of the builds that give my BM bunker problems are condition builds anyways like good engineers or trapper rangers, so the prot from forge is only really useful against mesmers and thieves — and I don’t suffer against the meta specs of those two classes.

I just don’t find a 60 sec ICD too attractive.

Dwayna runes would definitely be better for long drawn out fights, but forge runes pretty much make you ungankable.
Since half the wvw population run glass cannon builds and run around trying to instagib people, forge runes would give you a chance to survive the burst even against multiple people or if get jumped mid fight.

Basically Forge runes counters gc thieves and wvw is infested with them.

Fern hound is meh since its regen uses the pets healing power stat. Drakes are good for team fights but I would only use the river or marsh drake since their f2 hits way more reliably than the other drakes.

For optimum cat damage you’ll want to use Pet’s Prowess in combination with Signet of the hunt, that way it gets the damage and move speed bonuses. You could do this by switching Signet of Renewal to Signet of the hunt, then moving 10 points from bm into ws to pick up Empathetic bond, then change agility training to pet’s prowess.

You could also try a trapper build, the extra aoe would be more beneficial in team fights, but you have to give up some pet damage.

Faux Sheaux.6179:

Honestly though, I’d change Agility Training for Primal Reflexes. Sure, doing extra damage is nice, but that added vigor is no joke either. These builds only die when they fail to dodge. They are more than capable of outlasting your opponent. Being able to dodge even one more time every 15 seconds will do a whole lot more to helping you kill whatever you are fighting than a little extra pet damage/speed.

Primal Reflexes over agility training??? In a Bm build? I gotta disagree with that. The op has natural vigor so their endurance regen is already at 7.5%/s permanently. Vigor will only push that up to 10%/s so your only getting an extra 2.5%/s for 5 seconds for a total of 12.5% extra endurance. One dodge takes 50% endurance, so assuming it will trigger straight away every 15 seconds it will take exactly 60 seconds to get the extra 50% endurance (12.5% per 15s = 50% per 60s).

tldr: If you have natures vigor, primal reflexes = one extra dodge per minute at best.

Hexxen.7216:

Coming from a Mesmer who has been looking into playing with ranger. (I can’t find any of your guys build guides someone make a sticky that organizes them like we did for mesmer. PLEASE)

Ranger especially the massive Regen build is easily the most frustrating fight for my Mesmer. It is simply never ending battle.

Seriously, though I would love for you guys to organize your guides so those of us wanting to try the ranger can find them. ^^

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/New-To-Rangers-Looking-for-guides-CLICK-ME/first

Check that thread out. Feel free to bump it too its on 6th page when it should be stickied.

Blackbird.4382:

I’m gonna try this tonight. Already have all the apothecary gear.

The only thing I’m hesitant on is swapping out Signet of the Hunt for Signet of the Wild. I’m not sure I could go back to standard run speed. Does the build collapse w/o that passive healing?

Nah I have used that before, I just like the Signet of the Wild+agility training combo. I mainly switch between Signet of the Wild and Renewal, I was using Renewal in the last part of the vid. You also get swiftness and fury on weapon swap from the skirmishing tree. If you want to use Hunt switch out agility training for something else cos they don’t stack, I recommend always using hunt or agility training because they increase pet damage by a lot.

Blackbird.4382:

Good points, thx.

The trapper build has better AOE though, right? If that’s the case, I could see something like this being superior in typical WvW. Being outnumbered is the norm for solo roaming. Players who are X v. 1 tend to be over confident and will often play recklessly assuming that the kill is inevitable. I think that played to your advantage & strength in many of your fights in that vid.

Kuddos on some outstanding play!

Yeah it does, flame trap is pretty much bonfire on roids. For dueling I would say Bm is better but for general WvW and small group skirmishes trapper is amazing. It also takes camps like a boss (entangle, flame+spike trap and river drake). I usually just pull the whole camp and Aoe, sometimes you don’t even need to heal. Fully upgraded camps are also no sweat solo.

Also I think people see the shortbow and immediately try and get in melee range and train you, which is exactly what you want to land traps on people.

Blackbird.4382:

That was….eye opening. A couple of questions:

1. Why RAO over Entangle. You used Entangle in a couple of fights, but it seems like it would fit the “trapper” playstyle better than RAO. Great AOE dmg with a mechanism to hold targets in place for other traps.

2. Seems like the torch would also be a nice choice over the dagger. Maybe it’s redundant with the Fire trap?

3. Why do you think the BM builds are “superior”? Your survivability looked pretty darn good, your single target dmg seemed good, and your AOE was outstanding.

Not critiques, but questions from a noob. thx

1. I feel like entangle is a little gimmicky, it will either win you a fight or do nothing at all. I do use it for taking camps so I probably got caught in a fight while it was on cd. I mainly use RaO for the stability, since getting stomps off is half the battle for a ranger.

2. I was using condition duration food so flame trap is almost perma burning if you stand in it, also bonfire is lame without offhand training. Crippling talon does almost as much damage as throw torch, and it bleeds so it stacks damage with your other conditions, unlike burning. Stalkers strike is just awesome.

3. Good players will evade your traps and you rely on them for alot of your damage. Trap builds are strong in spvp because you have to fight on points. The Bm build has more reliable damage when not fighting on a point.

Forzani.2584:

Bumping for future reference. I fooled around a bit with traps, but it was without condition duration/damage in equipment.

Question. You have lots of healing but I guess you need to put 30 points into skirmishing to get Trap Potency. Seems like such a waste to have to take 300 precision and 30% crit damage to get that. How much better would it be in Trap Potency was in beastmaster line.

The extra healing and pet damage would be pretty op, but you would still have the same condition damage. The thing is Bm builds usually use axe/torch + sword dagger which will pretty much keep poison+burning+bleeds up with 100% uptime, so the extra trap condis would add no damage. Its the same reason i don’t take vipers nest, because you already get poison from your weapon skills.

Xsorus.2507:

By the way, I have a much better video of you just absolutely taking a dump on me up near the bridge on one of the side borderlands.

Actually I have like 3 of them….

I realy like the duels that go down to the wire, that last one in the vid was awesome how the advantage swayed the hole fight and we both ended up under 10% hp.

It would be awesome if you could upload those anyway because I realy like watching myself play from the other perspective.

Also I would be using runes of the forge as well but I cbf pveing anymore. The burn+prot duration is nice but the 10sec protection is godly.

Sb goes well in trapper builds since you don’t rely on your weapon skills for all your conditions. In Bm builds sb just doesn’t do as much condi damage as axe/torch/sword/dagger.

There’s not many trapper vids here on the forums and I’ve seen a few people asking for some so I whipped up a new build and recorded some footage for a day.
I don’t really play trapper much anymore, since imo BM is better than it at everything except fighting on a point, but its still a pretty effective build. Any feedback or questions are welcome. Enjoy!

Build: http://tinyurl.com/p59s2ed

Duels with Xsorus start at 18:40, I think he was using Melandru runes which made it very tough fight. I put the best duels in.

Haha I get your point about people adding. Ya try and engage in a 1v1/1v2 and people just come out of nowhere and swarm you like zombies.

Im prety sure traps have always triggered retaliation.

Almost 26k killshot on some poor ranger, and he wasn’t naked. Was back during the first month after release when I used to play warrior.

Zorby.8236:

fishergrip.4082:

Chokolata.1870:

greatsword 2 and warhorn 4 as blast finishers

Greatsword 2 blast finisher would be overpowered.

Mighty Blow
Cluster Bomb
Dragon’s Tooth
Eruption
Thunderclap

Clearly 4,8s is grossly overpowered. I’d like some more blast finishers as well…but Rangers aren’t the only profession lacking in that department, so doesn’t seem unintentional.

It would be considering rangers have awesome combo fields. Can you imagine how much a bunker ranger could heal using all those combo finishers in healing spring.

That was from a while ago, I use a different trap build now. I’m in the process of recording another trapper vid.

Awesome vid! I’ve never really played with power builds, except a little bit spvp, but I definitely want to get some power gear now. Also at 7:52 LOL it looks like you chopped that guys head off.

Nice vid enjoyed the ranger part. Only critique is that you’re using gs in the condition ( apothecary) bunker build. You would be much better off switching to axe/torch or shortbow instead of the gs. The gs + sword/ dagger combo is much better using the power bm bunker ( clerics) build.

I love this look been using it for ages. You dont see many people using arah medium armor its prety rare, let alone rangers in it.

Xsorus turned into a zergling NOOOOOOOOOO haha

I reckon condi rangers would kitten on this spec, you would have perma poison on you which would kitten your heals.

Blackbird.4382:

Comparing individual abilities among different classes is a complete self-serving waste of time.

Yeah I was just trying to show how useless it is.

Activating a signet grants 1 stack of might for 5 seconds.

This is one of the most useless underpowered traits in the game. To compare it with another trait, thieves get almost the exact same trait but it instead gives 5 stacks of might not 1.

Yeah thats only 5 times better, but wait it gets worse! Thief signets are on 30-30-30-45 second cooldowns, while ranger signets are on 30-60-60-80 second cooldowns.

How is stuff like this still in the game almost a year after release? Class traits are so unpolished, it seems like someone made them all in one day and they haven’t been changed/balanced since.

Furajir.3815:

Lol crap, I was filming something similair with masters bond, dangit.

Hehe well another game I like to play is trying to instagib people with blinding slash, you could record that. Basically you use Rao>hunters call>Wild + hunt signets> hunters shot> blinding slash. You can get 15k hits on glass targets if you’re lucky.

Like Eyes of the beast in wow? eh it would be fun to mess around with but it would be a gimmicky ability with very limited use in serious pvp, unless you could res+stomp people with it.

So my Jaguar Zander wanted to make a pvp vid. He doesnt know how to use recording software so I agreed to follow him around and film his fights. enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7RdNLKAuLY

Since you have 30 points in skirmishing, try switching to the trap traits and using a few traps when you meet these bunkers. I’m not sure how well it will work since you’re using a power build but i think Sol used to use something like that.

Found this in my screenshots folder.

From what you have said imo you should just use Valroth’s build but with mango pie for the extra regen to make up for the low healing power.

For another perspective of ranger vs d/p burst thief.

http://www.twitch.tv/ailesdelumiere/b/402944399
skip to 1:44:00

Traps prety much counter dagger thieves. If they try and stall it gives you more time for your traps to come off cooldown so you can throw them out as soon as the first ones go off.

If you like playing in groups I would go with necro. If you like playing solo and maybe small groups go ranger.

Yeah looking at your first build I would have suggested lowering your crit damage for some extra crit chance since you’re not using warhorn. The second build looks alot better imo.

I swear I’ve seen this vid before somewhere. Anyway nice vid enjoyed watching it.

Yep its an awesome trait that drastically increases pet damage on moving targets. I try fit it into all my builds, especially builds that use cats. Like I said in another post, if your running cats you should always use either agility training or signet of the hunt. Their damage on moving targets is worse than canines at default move speeds.