Guild Wars 2

Played 20+ matches today (speccing GM trait "Puppy Training). In PvE, I didn’t find it very useful, but it was great for +1ing fights in PvP. I waited on point (in Foefire) until the enemy d/d ele came to contest; when they were within F2 range, I popped Puppy Training and tamed their d/d ele onto our team. 6v4 for the next 45 seconds? I’ll take it. We ended up losing the game because it wore off when the ele was defending our lord alone.

Basically, everything ronpierce said in this thread…

Durzlla.6295:

FrownyClown.8402:

Quickness increases the speed of ressing by 25% according to the wiki, so its not better.

The 20% you get from mercy runes + allies aid stack with quickness, so you can very easily just use both, while rezzing almost as fast as someone using quickness without having to pop your own.

At some point, it’s redundant and overkill; a quickness rezz is generally more than enough to get off clutch rezzes, and too much focusing on rezzing ability brings down your other abilities. Wouldn’t you rather pop a utility (quickness) and be able to use it for something else 48 seconds later, than tie up an entire rune spot for the whole game?

Servanin.5021:

I’m kind of wondering how big of a difference they really make though. The bleeds all have a very short base duration (2-3 seconds), the sigils and all other conditions have an internal cooldown.

Some are more useful than others (e.g., Radiant Fire and Critical Infusion > Barbed Precision) Shrug . I find the low-damage passive condi’s to be most useful for baiting cleanses like plague sending, for example, which can ruin a condi-build’s day: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Plague_Sending.

Edit: Also, what this guy V said

LughLongArm.5460:

FrownyClown.8402:

Quickness increases the speed of ressing by 25% according to the wiki, so its not better.

Quickness is working for both you and your pet, mercy bonos apply only to you, so it is better. (and ofc you qz brings the utility to be good in other aspects of the game).

FrownyClown is right in that I assumed it increased rezz speed by 50%. I’ve modified my numbers below to correct my mistake. A quickness rezz+allies aid is only 23% higher rezz speed compared with allies aid+rune of mercy. The points in my above posts still hold, however; quickness should be your go-to for rezzing, as opposed to Runes of Mercy and Search and Rescue.

Salamander.1504:

…Immediately begin rezzing, proccing allies aid. Now you and your pet are quickness rezzing your ally, for a total of 183% rezz speed. With a Rune of Mercy and allies aid, your rezz speed is only 168%…

previously 219% and 168%, respectively

kdaddy.5431:

…There are alot of classes that have better options if looking for a certain role but atm if you watch any AG/ESL tournament there is at least 2-3 people on each team running cele ammy…

This is a good point, but if its not the cele, wouldn’t it just be another amulet? Build diversity in this game is always going to be minimized as long as metabattle.com is so widely used.

In any case, if d/d ele was nerfed and now “on the level,” having 3 cele’s on a team wouldn’t be such an advantage, right?

Spartacus.3192:

Sube Dai.8496:

There are 3 stats that directly affect condition damage, the same as there is for direct damage.

They are condition damage, condition duration, and precision.

Maxing the 3 of those will give you the highest possible condition damage.

I dont think condition damage can crit so why do you need precision?

E.g., https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Barbed_Precision Necro
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sharpened_Edges Ranger
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Radiant_Fire Gaurd
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ankle_Shots Thief
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Precise_Strikes Warrior
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Incendiary_Powder Engineer
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_Infusion Mesmer
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Burning_Precision Elementalist

+ all on-crit sigils

It really is only the might-stacking builds that can make cele shine. I’ve never been impressed with cele on my guardian or ranger, for example, where the other amulets do a better job. I suppose you could lower the stats on cele to bring it in line, but as far as I know only the ele can really take full advantage of cele. For example, the cele signet necro build is far from OP. On this basis, it seems that a nerf to d/d ele would probably be sufficient, rather than buffing the other amulets.

My 2 cents below:

The community has canonically believed that conditions builds are all about a “slow kill” and outlasting your opponent—the attrition standpoint. This is a natural conclusion because of the way condi damage ticks over time.

It is important to note, however, that condition damage is able to be cleansed at the opponents whim, given the right cooldown timings—i.e., condi damage is often cleansed after only a few ticks, or immediately. Given this, it seems logical that condi damage have high burst potential, with the caveat that it can be cleansed easily. In other words, condition builds naturally favor “bursting” to maximize the damage before a cleanse. Even when a condition build baits the opponent’s cleanses by applying condi’s slowly and methodically, they will always try to burst once the opponent’s cleanses are on CD.

Conquest as a game mode favors the quick-kill because: (1) you need the point to tick in your favor to win; (2) ending fights before getting +1’d increases your chance of survival/capping; and (3) allows your rotations to be more flexible, so it should be no surprise that both power and condition builds have the tools necessary to achieve a quick kill. Of course, both power and condi builds can be built for lower dps and higher tankiness, and thus can always be played to be either bursty or attrition-based, as the above posters discuss.

+1 to OP

Kicast.1459:

They are also talking about buffs..so be cautious…we can get an even worst juggernaut after.

If you reread Grouch’s comment (quoted below), he states that they are “discussing a number of issues that are affecting balance in PvP”…and that “it doesn’t mean we’re only looking at nerf’s”. I interpreted those comments to go hand-in-hand, and that the buffs aren’t necessarily directed at d/d eles, only that that they are considering buffs/nerfs to a variety of classes/builds.

Josh Davis.6015:

So, I can’t go into much detail on things quite yet, but I just wanted to reassure you folks that we’re actively discussing a number of issues that are affecting balance in PvP – including, but not limited to elementalist sustain/damage. Per the usual, we’ll be talking to you folks about the changes once we’ve finalized them.

Sorry I haven’t been that active on the forums lately – we’ve been pretty busy around the office.

“Thanks, Grouch. You’re the worst!”

Edit: Also, just because this is an elementalist thread doesn’t mean we’re only looking at elementalist, and it also doesn’t mean we’re only looking at doing nerfs.

Wetpaw.3487:

Ranger makes a great main, mediocre alt, easy to use, and hard to master (when compared/vs other professions).

good luck

Just out of curiosity, which professions are you referring to that are easier to master than Ranger? I myself didn’t notice any difference in difficulty between “mastering” Necro, Guard, Thief, and Ranger, at least.

Dardamaniac.1295:

But guys the thing is that you can rezz someone before the animation of finishing ends.. Ive try it…

You can do it even faster with a quickness rezz. Let’s say an ally is down 600 units away. Oh no! Swap pets, Pop Quickening Zephyr, and super speed your way over there. Immediately begin rezzing, proccing allies aid. Now you and your pet are quickness rezzing your ally, for a total of 219% rezz speed. With a Rune of Mercy and allies aid, your rezz speed is only 168%. In this scenario, you:
-Aren’t wasting a rune spot.
-Aren’t wasting a utility spot.
-Reach your teammate 50% faster from the superspeed and Rezz 51% faster.
-Your rezz skill (QZ) has 70% the CD, is a stun break, traited condi clear, and is useful in any scenario.

Taking Rune of Mercy at this point is redundant. The only time you should be using Rune of Mercy is when you wish to bestow mercy upon your opponents by gimping yourself

As long as you can stay on your target, I’d rather go D/Wh + D/D than use A/D so you don’t take a dps hit…Axe 3 can’t carry 1 and 2, unfortunately.

1) The best class for PvP is d/d cele ele; nerfs incoming though. Every class can level up extremely easily.
2) Currently, we are experiencing a very bunkery meta, so you’re only ever going to be 1shotting baddies. Pick a build that you have fun and success with and forget about your 1 shotting dreams.
3) All the classes can be rewarding/successful given talent, just pick the one that suits you.

Search and Rescue—waste of utility spot.
Rune of Mercy—waste of rune spot.
Running these makes you a liability to your team. You can’t DPS, you can’t bunker; too much emphasis on rezzing. These skills are the epitome of a “pass the buck” play-style wherein you rely on your teammates to do the heavy lifting. If you want something done right…

Just take Allies’ Aid and Quickening Zephyr—Allies’ Aid is fantastic, and can get your teammate up even when you are CC’d, and QZ is better in literally every single scenario—stomping, rezzing, kiting/juking, dps, communes, etc, has a lower CD, and is a traited condi clear.

Same, a dodge fixes it too.

Below are some suggestions to improve the stat section that pops up at the end of PvP:

1) Under the defense section, it would be nice to know the “number of attacks evaded.”

2) The box with the stats disappears too quickly. Allow us to look at these stats from the last match (along with an average of all of our matches) while we twiddle our thumbs in HotM.

Feel free to add more.

What’s happening:
When you load into a new map or underwater, your graphics options reverts to “Native”. It will still display Subsample.

How to Fix:
Change your graphics setting to Native, then change it back to Subsample. You’ll need to do this every time you go underwater or load into a new map. If you don’t want to deal with this, just keep your graphics settings on Native.

Frediosz.2718:

Shen Slayer.3058:

The ranger has been ignored by Anet for the last 3 years. Their damage is terrible compared to the others. And their only good healing/condition cleanse Healing Spring skill was nerf to nothingness. Pets are unreliable and takes too long to attack.

I would suggest to make another class…don’t waste your time leveling a ranger.

I suggest to stop using a bloody bowbear…
Melee damage on Ranger is good – it’s probably 4th DPS ingame if you use sword+horn/great sword.

Terrible damage is on necros, engis and mesmers. (and necros are rather debatable of their “terrible” damage)

1) I keep seeing “bowbear” on the forums; what is/was it?

2) How can a sword/gs melee ranger deal good damage? The damage coefficients are terrible. Do they solely rely on damage modifiers from traits?

Needs a fix asap. Resetting every time you warp into and out of a PvP match…

+1
charssssssssssss

Tiffany.8576:

It has nothing to do whatsoever with the drivers. It is the “Render Sampling” setting being reset to “Native” (even if it still shows “Subsample”) in the graphics settings. It needs to be fixed.

How often does this reset? Or do you just need to change it back once?

Bump having the same problem.

Just curious why this isn’t a thing?

Dadnir.5038:

I don’t think they need buff. It’s bad design, they just need a rework.

They should just make them like “pet’s signet”. Granting pets a way to passively grant an area effect on allie when they hit a foe and allowing us to proc the active that would happen at the pet’s location. Yeah I ask for actual synergy between the ranger and it’s pet. I ask for a design that promote a good management of the ranger’s specific mechanism. I ask for something that should have been done from they start even if it stray from GW1 spirit’s skill.

+ 10^9

style.6173:

Here is what a lot of you do not understand. A thief will need to give up a trait line to get daredevil. What will they give up?

Shadow Arts? No heal or condi clear on stealth? Great!
Deadly Arts? No panic strike, improvision? Great!
Trickery? No extra initiative or steal buffs? Great!

Sure, more evades, but the person will need to give up a lot also.

I foresee a lot of people are going to say bye bye to Deadly Arts…

Only RNG condi clear from sigils, no stun breaks, no energy sigils. Needs to be fixed >.>

Why do you prefer shortbow? How often can you stay above 90% hp to take advantage of your WS refined toxins? It’s hard to not take ambidexterity.

Trapper builds generally suffer from a lack of stability and stunbreaks, and you don’t have the inherent sustain that other builds bring with various forms of healing outside of the #6 skill. You need to work around these [huge] disadvantages by knowing when to pop your evades. Viable, but not tier 1. You’ll be able to win every 1v1 (you can beat a necro by baiting their plague sending and plague signet, but this will never be trivial).

Know when to pick your battles, because large mid-fights are not your thing; you have to partly adopt the role of the thief and play sides because you can easily be focused in a large teamfight. You can maybe take signet of stone to help with this (at the cost of removing something actually useful), but that’s like putting a batman bandaid on a gunshot wound. For this reason alone, the build is limited in its usefulness—the lack of versatility in the size of “engagable” fights can (and will) lose you games. Your rotations need to be perfect, otherwise you’re a liability to your team. Home is your responsibility, but you can’t sit there twiddling your thumbs, either.

In my experience, you can be effective with traps as long as you only use spike trap. The CD is longish, but you can aoe interrupt stomps/rezzes and control a 1v1/1v2 engagement on point fairly well with it. The rest of your utilities should be saved for just that; utilities; stunbreaks and condi clears (i.e., traited survival skills such as quickening zephyr, lightning reflexes, sharpening stone, etc ). Loading up with traps just makes you a 1-dimensional 1-trick pony.

Raven.9603:

Tragic Positive.9356:

67,33% from weakness, bark skin and protection. (Assuming weakness reduces total damage by 0,25% as a 50% chance to reduce damage by 50%)
X from toughness.

You can expect roughly 87% damage reduction.

Weakness = 25% dmg mitagation.

Against a typical power build (e.g., cele or marauder), weakness ends up being a ~32% damage reduction when you account for weakness removing crits!

Rizigmar.2681:

Exedore.6320:

Over a year ago, they were going to add perplexity runes to PvP. The PvP community said “no, it’s completely broken”. It still is to this day and thankfully it’s still not in PvP.

What makes those broken is the 40% Condition Duration food when tacked on with those stats and runes. I mean Dire is also comparable to Soldier Amulet no? Hmmm now that I think about it a little more would this mean top tier play will pick up on this as well if they did add this?

No, because a soldier build lacks precision and ferocity, and so will always be limited in damage (but great in tankiness), whereas a dire build can maximize damage and tankiness.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Salamander.2504:

Bump: I still think protection should effect condition damage, in the same way that vulnerability now does.

Sure, once we get that boon that lets us ignore direct damage entirely for its duration.

You have Resistance (admittedly, not wide distribution, but it shouldn’t be either) and cleanses. Learn to use.

Invulnerability is already a thing, and it’s more widespread than Resistance (which I am not a fan of). Leave your ad homenem’s in another thread. I’m fully aware how to cleanse: I’m not personally having trouble with conditions, but offering suggestions intended to improve overall gameplay for everyone.

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

Neither support Necro or support/dps Guardian are “back-line” classes—they are both in-your-face bruisery classes, who fight on point. In fact, most classes/builds in gw2 PvP are not “back-line” because Conquest PvP revolves around point control. If you fight offpoint, you may win the battle but lose the war, so to speak (i.e., fighting offpoint and letting opponents decap/cap the point will lose you points, and thus the game).

If you wanted a “back-line” necro you could try a dps Well necro with a staff and dagger/warhorn, but you won’t be supportive (you wouldn’t want to take blood magic in this scenario).

Both classes (necro and guard) are extremely rewarding to main, and both offer high skill caps. I can’t really say which class you should choose; both classes can meet your “support with some survivability” criteria. Neither are mobile, and both can be built for either support, dps, or a hybrid. It really comes down to which feels better for you to play. The role you want to play may also influence your decision, but if you want to play “back line” you are going to limit yourself to certain necro builds (and 0 guardian builds).

Don’t bother leveling anything yet—to learn which class you want, get all of your characters into the heart of the mists ASAP, where all of the skills and traits are available to you. You can practice with your setups against the AI and see which ones you like. The key point is that you’ll never figure out which character you want at lvl 12 when so few skills and no traits are available to you.

Quin.6105:

I like like to skirt the fights, and do support. I don’t understand Boons and conditions? Are they like slows and cripples/ buffs for allies? And how the heck do i trigger them when i want to trigger one?

Yes boons and conditions are the slows/cripples and buffs. Boons are the orange boxes that pop up next to your health bubble, and conditions are the little red boxes. They are generally triggered through skills and traits (which are labeled when they do). You can also gain boons through comboing finishers and fields, but I wouldn’t worry about that right now if I were you; just be aware it’s possible.

I’m not sure what you mean by “skirting” fights but you can provide support with a variety of classes and builds. I recommend making a necro and playing around with the skills/traits on some golems and play a few matches in practice arena (aka hotjoin). You should be able to tell if the class is for you within a day or so. Getting utterly destroyed is unfortunately inevitable for new players, but you’ll get the hang of it in the coming weeks, so don’t get discouraged. Same advice goes for guardian. You won’t know what you’ll like until you play it. I recommend you start out using tankier builds, as they are more forgiving for newer players and will help you learn the mechanics.

1) They are about as hard/easy as any class. DS is a mechanic to be managed like CD’s, initiative, etc. There are a lot of creative ways to use DS, so the necro skillcap is quite high, even though I wouldn’t consider it too difficult to pick up.
2) Yes to both, but not really at the same time. To be a good healer, go into the blood magic line and take Life From Death and Transfusion traits. You’ll want to take some extra healing power (e.g., cele amulet, etc.). You won’t want to focus on this (I don’t, for example, recommend cleric amu) because healing in general is a poor way to support people (though this may change in HoT).
3) Their greatest strength in PvP depends on the build: for a bunker build, it is their attrition and rezzing ability, for a more dps-focused build, it can be their AOE well damage or condi transfers/boon corrupts.

Edit: I noticed you posted a similar topic in the guardian forum. I happen to main both guards and necro’s. You can’t go wrong with either! Personally, I find my medi guard to excel at bursting people down, but it’s not that mobile which makes it not that much of a team player. On the other hand, I build my necro to be a very tanky bunker designed to contest points and hold out in 1v2/3. Both are assets to the team and equally fun (and viable) to play, but with very different play styles. Medi guard will always out-dps a necro but it’s glassy with long CD’s. You can bunker very effectively on a guard too, but it was never for me.

DPS guard is 100% viable, and eats people alive. It’s not a noob stomber, it’s an everyone stomper (including DPS warrior) if you know what you’re doing. Try this: http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-Bs-Bl;0NFk40G3BG-90;9;4OnQ;0046147148;4W7H7X;17V-17V-1a0K

Hammer5→JI→Hammer2→Torch4→Mace3→gg

You will get rocked by d/d eles in 1v1, though, there’s really no ways around it with this build.

Bump: I still think protection should effect condition damage, in the same way that vulnerability now does.

The wiki states that the superior sigil of air has a bug:

“Bug: Has an internal cooldown of 5 seconds instead of 3 seconds. This makes it exactly as powerful as Major Sigil of Air.”
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Sigil_of_Air

Does anyone know if this bug is present in every game mode (PvP), or just in PvE?

Terrorsquad.2349:

Salamander.2504:

Shaogin.2679:

MarkPhilips.5169:

Base damage is really too high and 3 burning stacks on a single skill is like spike damage, not condi damage.

Professions like Ele D/D , guardian and condi engi (with flamethrower + ip + pistol oh) can stack a ridiculous quantity of burning too fast. I think every burning skill in their case shouldn’t apply more than 1 stack.

If you’re having issues with condi Engi that is your own fault. All of their damage is very well telegraphed. Their access to burning is most builds is limited to the last hit of a 2.25 second channel, napalm which is a burning line on the ground that is clearly visible, IP proc which is 2 stacks every 10 seconds, and blowtorch which is a max of 3 stacks if within 200 range, and IA which can burst you with burn stacks, but places an Icon on the Engineer’s bar so you KNOW it’s coming.

Same goes for Rangers. Their burn application abilities are very well telegraphed and completely avoidable. The biggest offender of unavoidable burns is the Guardian, but that comes in bursts and so you should know to save you cleanse for that burn stack burst which, also, you KNOW is coming.

So much this. Guardian also only applies burning (with the occasional blind). If you can’t out-cleanse one condition, consider changing your build, not the guardian burns.

Burn guards apply more burning than any build can cleanse.. Stop protecting the broken to faceroll you’re way out.

Nice ad hominem. I don’t play a burn guard though, so I’m not defending my build. I’ve tried it out, and it’s useless against anyone who knows what they are doing. Marauder amu with torch applies some moderate burning, but I suggest you worry more about the 8k hammer2+torch4 hits than the measly burns..the burns are more for panic/distraction than anything else, because people freak out when they see any stacks of burning right now, even if they are weak. If you are dying to burning from a Marauder guard its an l2p issue for both you and the guard.

Consider making a Marauder [or even a full condi] guardian and try one out before you call me “faceroll.” Also, I eat burning guards for breakfast on my guard, necro, and [laugh] ranger. Somehow, I’m able to cleanse, even though “no build can cleanse that many burns.”

Shaogin.2679:

MarkPhilips.5169:

Base damage is really too high and 3 burning stacks on a single skill is like spike damage, not condi damage.

Professions like Ele D/D , guardian and condi engi (with flamethrower + ip + pistol oh) can stack a ridiculous quantity of burning too fast. I think every burning skill in their case shouldn’t apply more than 1 stack.

If you’re having issues with condi Engi that is your own fault. All of their damage is very well telegraphed. Their access to burning is most builds is limited to the last hit of a 2.25 second channel, napalm which is a burning line on the ground that is clearly visible, IP proc which is 2 stacks every 10 seconds, and blowtorch which is a max of 3 stacks if within 200 range, and IA which can burst you with burn stacks, but places an Icon on the Engineer’s bar so you KNOW it’s coming.

Same goes for Rangers. Their burn application abilities are very well telegraphed and completely avoidable. The biggest offender of unavoidable burns is the Guardian, but that comes in bursts and so you should know to save you cleanse for that burn stack burst which, also, you KNOW is coming.

So much this. Guardian also only applies burning (with the occasional blind). If you can’t out-cleanse one condition, consider changing your build, not the guardian burns.

nearlight.3064:

Salamander.2504:

nearlight.3064:

Blood magic doesn’t work very well with celestial. The siphons don’t scale well enough to be worth taking over the perma-weakness and PoC and plague sending in Curses. Transfusion is a good trait, but you honestly need to build much tankier if you want to take on the role of a primary rezzer.

Life from Death has a healing coefficient of 1.5, and works great with celestial.
Without celestial=747 aoe heal at full health, 972 below 75%, or 1197 below 50%
With Celestial=1587 aoe heal at full health, 1812 below 75%, or 2037 below 50%

This skill rocks. Blood magic with celestial rocks. I love rocks.

Regardless the role of the cele signet necromancer is to do 1v1s and +1 smaller fights. While blood gives you better support in teamfights, it fails to be as useful as curses in smaller fights, nor does it give any meaningful additional personal sustain in teamfights. If anything curses is better for teamfights simply for more condi bombs and weakening shroud to negate melee bursts.

That’s fine and all but I’m not advocating replacing Curses with Blood magic, just saying that Blood Magic is totally viable (and rewarding) with a Cele amulet. You can rack up ~6-8k heal every 30 seconds flashing Life from Death with Cele…which would be kind of like having a guardian meditation heal on a 7 second cooldown when flashing. To get even more offtopic but for the sake of build-theory and discussion, I’ll point out that the most viable replacement for Curses would be Death Magic (not Blood Magic) so that you can still clear condis (shrouded removal replaces plague sending) and receive damage mitigation (Beyond the Veil replaces Weakening Shroud).

In any case, the Meta Cele build isn’t the only viable option with Cele: the limitation on the role of the Meta Cele build you’ve outlined (1v1’s and +1’ing a fight) only applies to the Meta Build. Add in Blood Magic and you’ve got a different build with a different role. No less viable, and no less fun. Cheers.

nearlight.3064:

Blood magic doesn’t work very well with celestial. The siphons don’t scale well enough to be worth taking over the perma-weakness and PoC and plague sending in Curses. Transfusion is a good trait, but you honestly need to build much tankier if you want to take on the role of a primary rezzer.

Life from Death has a healing coefficient of 1.5, and works great with celestial.
Without celestial=747 aoe heal at full health, 972 below 75%, or 1197 below 50%
With Celestial=1587 aoe heal at full health, 1812 below 75%, or 2037 below 50%

This skill rocks. Blood magic with celestial rocks. I love rocks.

Xaylin.1860:

“Shivers of Dread”

• Indeed not enough sources of Fear to make it worthwhile.
• Add: 2s of chill in 180-240 radius when entering Reapers Shroud.

Great idea. Every single traitline except reaper currently has at least one benefit on entering/exiting shroud:

-Spite has Rending Shroud (Yes you can flash this) and Spiteful spirit (though the ICD should be removed)
-Curses has Furious Demise and Weakening Shroud
-Death Magic has Shrouded Removal and Beyond the Veil
-Blood magic has Life from Death
-Soul Reaping has Foot in the Grave

-Reaper shroud has nothing. Fix this by giving it the sigil of Hydromancy effect on entering shroud. And don’t make shroud count as a weapon swap.

Salamander.2504:

My vigil continues. I will not shave my beard until I can see my utilities while in death shroud.

ANet, my beard is getting pretty grisly. It’s starting to effect my work-life and personal relationships. Please don’t let my sacrifice be in vain: let us see the cooldowns of our utilities while in death shroud.

Crapgame.6519:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

If they were OP in any way whatsoever, they would be used extensively in PvP.

WvW. And they are, and have been, since introduced. But you know this already as you list a couple in your build thread. Like I said – OP is subjective. Just my personal opinion that they are.

+1. Although I’ve only recently picked up ranger (played guard, nec, thief), I can already see how great traps are for low CD high dps and point control in conquest PvP.

xemplifi.3524:

How do you know that 1/2 the people who come on the forum think they’re better than they actually are? Also how do you know many people have that attitude when some indication of their MMR has never been available to them?

I’ll just go ahead and volunteer data point #1 and confirm that I most definitely think I’m better than I actually am.

That being said, while theoretically having a metric by which to gauge yourself and/or other players might be fun (or might not, as it invites QQ), there isn’t a system currently in place that can accurately capture player skill, for the reasons outlined by the above posters.

Hammer works great. I prefer to use it with mace/torch offhand for more burst potential with a marauder amulet. Your burst would go like this:

Ring of Warding->Judges Intervention->Hammer 2->weapon swap->Torch 4-> Mace 3->Mace 2/auto attack until you can swap back to hammer for hammer 3 (if necessary) to ensure landing another hammer 2. As with any typical medi build, still use Smite condition ASAP once you get a condi upon the initial burst. You may even have an extra Torch 4 to land in there if you run Radiant Fire from the radiance line (which you should). Push Mace 3 back one step in the rotation if they are still surprised and aren’t attacking back yet—the lamest thing you can do is stand there channeling Mace 3 while your prey twiddles their thumbs.

Depending on your opponent, they may even be downed right after Mace 3. If Hammer 2, Torch 4, Mace 3, and Smite condition crit, you’ve done ~14k damage in just a few seconds, plus the ~1k burning from Judges Intervention. I prefer mace/torch over the GS because Mace 3 and Torch 4 allow you to burst more frequently than GS, especially because the GS burst is so telegraphed and thus easy to miss. If you time it right, landing Mace 3 and Torch 4 bursts is easy as pie. Like any medi setup, you’ll be fairly defenseless after the initial burst, so get ready to pop your virtues and renewed focus if you start attracting unwanted attention…

I support this +1

There are great rangers out there, although I’m not sure whats gained by replacing a warrior with them. A good player can replace any class.

That being said, I generally frown when I see a solo-que ranger on my team, because too frequently they fight offpoint and let the opponent decap (in a 1v1) without a second thought. It’s very frustrating.

ronpierces’s point is that while power’s effectiveness increases linearly, the effectiveness of toughness decreases exponentially, albeit with an exponent of -1.

I’ve attached 2 graphs which complement ronpierce’s napkin math to aid the discussion. The first graph (blue line) shows the damage reduction (on the Y axis) as a function of toughness (on the X axis), where the damage reduction is scaled from 1800 toughness so that the damage at 1800 toughness=1, and higher toughness values decrease the damage fraction (0.5=half damage).

The bottom graph shows the same results but plotted in a slightly different way. This graph (red line) shows the damage reduction in percent as a function of increasing 100 toughness. For example, increasing your toughness from 2000 to 2100 decreases your incoming damage by ~4.3%, and increasing your toughness from 2600 to 2700 decreases your incoming damage by ~2.5%.

It is important to note that because the damage reductions in these graphs are shown as a percentage, they are wholly independent of the power, weapon damage, or damage coefficient. One way to increase the effectiveness of toughness (i.e., to increase the negative slope of the blue line) would be to increase the toughness exponent. For example, making the toughness exponent -1.2 instead of the current -1.0 would allow toughness to scale more effectively. This would, however, need to be compensated: damage across the board would go down, so either weapon coefficients or power would have to be increased by some factor.

Silverkey.2078:

…In particular, I don’t know how to properly use my signets. Between the might, the boon corruption and their own intrinsic effect, I am never quite sure when to use them. Could anyone explains me briefly the main strategy of the build?…

Use plague signet when you need to dump a lot of condis: it’s your main condi clear and lowest CD stun break. If you see 3+ burn stacks from an ele/guard/condi ranger with 1 or 2 other condi’s, feel free to pop it quick (preferably only if SA off CD), because those burns can do a lot of damage in a short period of time. Use locust signet in large battles to aoe corrupt boons; also can be used in a bind as a second heal to the same effect. The CD’s of these are low enough that you don’t need to “save” them; you’ll know to use them when you’ve been condi-bombed or the opposing team has an ele/guard dishing out boons like candy. This happens regularly, so don’t be afraid to keep them on CD.

I try to avoid using signet of vampirism frequently so that I can benefit from the heals over time, but if you need a quick burst heal, use it. It’s especially effective when your team is focusing down one player, as the active effect will improve your team’s DPS on that target. Unlike the passive effect, the active works through DS, so if your life force is full and you need some heals/dps, pop it before entering DS.

Corrupting stability turns it into fear: use this to your advantage when securing a rezz or a stomp (or to get an FT engi off point); locust can help you get this off quickly because you don’t even need a target, but plague signet is equally good because it’s instant-cast.

Don’t waste your signets just to stack might, just think of that as an added bonus; you’ll acquire plenty of might passively through a combination of siphoned power, plague sending, sigil of strength, reaper’s might and rune of strength.

bhagwad.4281:

…A bonus would be to know how to survive in a group fight when you’re constantly the focus of attacks because you’re the necro

These aren’t cele-signet specific, but what I can think of now: Pop SA and start out a fight in plague form to get the most out of the vitality boost if: 1) you’re outnumbered on point which ticks in your favor; or 2) incoming mesmer/thief [stealth] burst that happens frequently at mid right when the match starts. Don’t be afraid to pop shroud to eat a backstab and then instantly leave it to regen your LF(+). On the same token, take advantage of the low CD fear of DS 3 to pop DS—>fear—>leave DS if your health pool is above ~75%—-your dagger AA DPS is still high enough that leaving DS for the 10 s CD isn’t a gamebreaker(+), and using fear like this does help take some pressure off in the long run. Use dagger 2 life siphon immediately following signet of vampirism active to get a beefy heal; you can use DS 4 to secure the last ~3.5 seconds of the active. Use DS 5 to help kite, and locust signet for a second heal if needed. I personally use FitG for the stability and stunbreak, which helps relieve CC pressure under focus.

(+) (these strategies do work best if you have unholy sanctuary [so you don’t get caught with DS on CD] but there isn’t really a traitline you can sacrifice in the cele-signet build we’re discussing, so I mention this purely as food for thought. Either way, flashing shroud defensively when (1) your LF is too low to spend lots of time in it; or (2) your health pool is high, ensures aoe weakness uptime from weakening shroud, so try not to let your LF get lower than 10%)

I hope this helps.