Guild Wars 2

Heimskarl … it also synergizes with Quickness … think about it

@runeblade:
That’s fine and your opinion. We can look at the numbers some other time when everyone isn’t as much in flux.

No one is forcing you to take Rending strikes as an Adapt just like no one would be forcing you to take it as a Grandmaster in your example.

Additionally, it is in the Beastmastery specialization. I don’t think anyone should be surprised to see “Your pet does this” traits in the Beastmastery specialization.

@Girion:
That looks OP. Compare the ferocity gained from that to what other classes are gaining and then do a double-take because you just gave that as an Adapt level trait and it is giving Torment on top of that.

Heck Warrior’s grandmaster only gives 150 Ferocity per axe wielded (so a max of 300 that locks you into AxeAxe).

Can anyone tell me how the 450/300 ferocity and 6s of Torment were figured as far as their actual quantities to make it “fair” and “balanced” ?

You’re entitled to think what you want, but if you are actually reading then you should have noticed that I’ve asked you questions about what it is the developers did that has brought about your opinion … you have not answered one of them but instead griped about my opinion of your opinion and called facts “facts” … because “facts” aren’t a well-defined term I guess.

Fact: They cut up and joked in every one of the discussions on the various classes

Fact: They made all sorts of jokes related to things we see players discuss/complain_about/etc. on the forums during each of the class sections.

Fact: They told everyone that everything is currently in a state of flux.

Feel free to base your opinions off of this.

If you’re going to freely share your negative opinion of something without backing it up with anything other than “it’s just perception”, then don’t be surprised when someone shares their negative opinion of your opinion.

If you’re unhappy with other’s opinions of your shared opinions and you think of facts as “facts” then please do leave. Nothing will be lost.

@NecroN:
Don’t believe I said a thing about tanky build.
You’re entitled to your opinion, but plenty of us are able to keep our illusions alive long enough to get some autos out of them before we shatter them. If you aren’t, that’s your problem and, yes, you probably wouldn’t benefit much from this trait.

@Daishi:
That’s a darn good question … we’ll have to wait and find out, but based on the wording:

… whenever you or an illusion hits with Spatial Surge …

It could very well be per each of those 3 hits per single channel of the auto-attack. This would explain the low 2% currently shown as well.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/ready-up-core-specializations-summary/

Shortly after 4:20:00.

You should realize from reading several of the posts that not everyone has their facts straight. Heck I’ll admit I even got one wrong when posting about the new Duelist minor trait for confusion. I could’ve sworn I heard them say when Mesmer and Illusions are crit as opposed to when they crit.

Your example simply shows that people can have a perception that doesn’t match the actuality. This is known since not everyone applies logic, looks at the facts, etc..

How does that support complaining about “how they said things” during the AMA during particular classes and having an issue when someone thinks such baseless opinions are ridiculous other than not liking that someone thinks said baseless opinions are ridiculous.

Bring some facts to it and we’re solid.
Bring some way to gauge that they were “worse” during those classes than they were during others.

Then we’ll talk.

I don’t think Rending Strikes is a “weaker Sharpened Edges”.

• Sharpened Edges is not 100% chance on crit … Rending Strikes is.
• Rending Strikes is pet only (probably why some say it’s the weaker version).
• Rending Strikes can be taken with Sharpened Edges … allowing your high precision pets (birds/felines) to apply 2 bleeds per crit … and those pets have quick attack rates … including attacks that hit multiple times.

This last point is the one I think people should be focusing on with these two.

Bran.7425:

And that adds what to the general discussion. That you find people disagreeing with you laughable, I’d hope not as that is kind of sad.

Please, feel free to point out exactly what they were doing during Necromancer, Ranger that they didn’t do during the others.

If you read the forums as well, you know that I prefer to discuss things when someone else has a differing opinion … but we discuss facts

When someone states that perception can be more important than actualities when we’re disagreeing on something … how exactly do you want me to discuss that?

I could say “they did this in both” … you could reply “my perception is that they didn’t”.

You could say “I perceived they were far less professional during Necromancer and Ranger”. I would then ask you how you judge that? How do you measure that?

Do you now see how ridiculous it is?

If you want to know what I find laughable … jokes … I don’t roll my eyes at jokes.

I do roll my eyes when someone is stating something as fact when they have provided no facts to support their statement … and then defend it adamantly with a further whilst still providing no facts.

You’re free to your opinions “how they said things” … I’m free to my opinion of your opinion. And you’re again free of your opinion of my opinion of your opinion.

My eyes will eventually see down my throat at this rate.

Just good Lord…

My eyes may actually roll out of my head.

@Mistsim:
Possibly, but let’s look at the numbers for that…

To account for not gettings stats, they said they are going to move base stats from their current 926 to about 1,000.

In sPvP a glassbow doesn’t get any more toughness or vitality, so you’re at 1,000 vitality … that’s 74 more Vitality.

74 Vitality means you’ll have about 740 more health than the base 15,182 … so 15,922 … we’ll round up to 16,000 for simpler math.

So Barkskin will reduce damage by 50% until you are at 90% hp or lower. So that means as soon as you lose 1,600 health, Barkskin won’t be helping you. So that means they only have to hit you for 3,200 direct damage to drop your Barkskin as 3,200 reduced by 50% is that 1,600 damage they need to inflict to drop Barkskin.

Last I checked, that isn’t very hard to do when talking about the class that drops most zerk classes in a few seconds … over 15k.

I’d be very careful before placing my trust into Barkskin when it’s based on my %HP and my HP pool is tiny.

Bran.7425:

They do really need to work on how they choose to present the information about the professions, imagine if the engineer (or elementalist) changes were presented in a manner similarly to those of necromancer or ranger.

You mean cutting up and making jokes?
They were doing that from the start and throughout the whole thing … especially with the tongue-in-cheek about conditions in a world where Poison/Burning stack.

Perhaps it isn’t them and it is instead you all being more sensitive when they are talking about the classes you care about versus the classes you don’t care about.

You also have to take into account their relationships with the various developers as well as the personalities of those developers. Different developers were on at different times. This can change the dynamics of the presentation.

Finally … as previously stated … by that time they had already been doing it for hours … perhaps they were getting a bit more comfortable.

Just food for thought.

If I was a developer for ArenaNet, I’m pretty sure my eyes would roll out of my head from all of these posts about “how they said W” … “how they didn’t say X” … “they did say Y” … “they didn’t say Z” …

… heck, I already eyeroll plenty when reading some of this stuff …

… so kudos to ArenaNet developers for still having their eyesballs in their heads.

Descent Into Madness, Phase Retreat … enjoy your Chaos Armor … now better with the appropriate Specialization

Rampager’s stats:

• High precision means that you and your clones will crit often … more bleeds & confusion
• Power means you won’t hit like a wet noodle … just won’t hit like a berzerker
• Condition damage means your conditions will hurt … not as much as Rabid/Carrion/etc. … but quite a bit.

As far as what you need to do to get the cooldown … they mentioned it was Mesmer’s autoattacks AND the clones’ autoattacks.

A Mesmer with just 3 greatsword clones (don’t know why you don’t have a phantasm, ignore that, lol) is going to have each clone hitting 3 times every ~1.5 (see wiki for: 1.4) from 1,200 range without having to worry about anti-projectiles … applying bleeding and confusion on crits.

On top of that, they will be reducing the cooldown of your Greatsword skills. Whether the Mesmer is auto-attacking or doing something else is irrelevant.

Pretty sure they said May 1 … which would be Friday.

<< … Looks at Necromancer Specializations
>> … Looks at people thinking ANet hates Necromancers

You people smoking some hardcore stuff while I’m at work?

Guardian can protect the heck out of a point via anti-projectile and blocking movement … though melee with stability get past that.

Ranger can protect the heck out of a point with a plethora of Immobilizes, Chills, and Roots … though condition cleanses get past that.

When you combine the two … it’s wonderful.

For that enemy zerg to try to overrun your position, they have to pop quite a good bit of stability and condition cleanse … that’s going to suck for them if anyone else in your zerg has CC (hint: they should … see Hammer Warriors … Dagger Eles … etc. etc.)

The problem I see in WvW is there is a lot of “monkey see, monkey do” and not much “what other shenanigans can be pull off”.

You have to play to a class’s strengths if it is to do well in any area of the game.

If they made spirits good enough that I wanted to at least use them when defending a tower/keep … I’d be very happy.

I imagine that whatever they did that made me like them in those situations would make me like them in PvE as well as long as I could find a safe spot to park them.

As long as it doesn’t require me to physically rez the pet like a player like we used to have to do … great.

Ranger has a strong correlation of player skill to Ranger skill than some other classes.

That said, it also has a low barrier to entry in PvE due to pets tanking for you.

This sadly leads to why when I’m in fractals I’m often horribly disappointed with other Rangers because they never progressed beyond that low level and actually learned the mechanics of the class … nor the game really.

When you start to learn the subtle nuances of the Ranger class, it is extremely rewarding. Some examples of these nuances are:

• When you pet swap, the pet you just swapped in will try to use a particular skill every time. Canines, for example, will try to do their knockdown first-thing.
• Sword #2 to roll backwards, untarget, turn 180, Sword #2 again. You just went quite far away from your target. You can combo these in multiple ways and even throw in Lightning Reflexes.

If you play your Ranger like the other classes, you’ll feel lackluster. Think a little harder about what your Ranger can do that others can’t.

Several Ranger builds aren’t a “shove it down their throats” sort of build unlike several Warrior/Guardian/etc. builds. This requires some cleverness.

Some quick one-offs:
- Muddy Terrain … immobilize and pulsing cripple
- Traps … spike and frost in particular
- Pets with CC (ex: fear bomb from safety)
- Can control pet while on Siege (better than most everyone else on Siege whose mechanics do nothing for them while they are on it).
- Chaining absurd amounts of Immobilize … protip: stability doesn’t do a thing about immobilize and is a great way to induce rage in your opponents :-p
- Entangle … though I miss the days when it wasn’t limited to 5 targets … oh those were the days … mmmmm.
- Water Field … only you and Staff Ele have these unless the group is very coordinated … then Engineer Healing Turret can be counted here … it simply doesn’t last nearly as long as those from Ranger and Staff Ele.
- Longest range in the game … you can threaten backfield without overextending.
- Large AOE Cripple (longbow only)

I agree that Ranger is only going to get better with the new changes. Several new combinations have opened up. The Specialization system looks like it is going to shake things up.

Aye, if you are running a zerk build, I think one of the first things you should be asking yourself now and after Specializations go in is “how do I handle a Thief”. If you can’t answer this, you are going to be sad any time a semi-decent Thief gets on you. Their traits still have them pretty handily positioned at the top of the zerker-meta food-chain in PvP and they are a difficult class to avoid/disengage due to their mobility.

@Mistsim:
Smart man. Yes, Mesmers hate being auto-attacked to death. Mesmer defenses largely revolve around avoiding the “big hits” as Mesmer defense is largely active blocks/distortion/immunity.

That being said … be careful using projectiles. Some Mesmers like to use Focus … usually traited. Thankyfully for people with projectile weapons, Mesmer Focus is underrated (thanks to iWarden), but having your projectiles reflected and then that same Temporal Curtain pulling you into the iWarden can be painful (I love doing it, lol).

Mesmer reflection will likely be more commonplace when the Specializations are unlocked as many Mesmers feel Evasive Deception is a must-have so will be taking Dueling where Evasive Mirror is and it competes quite well with the other Master Dueling Major traits.

Careful being in melee … that’s where the Shatter burst is.

Basically, quickly kitten what sort of Mesmer you’re fighting … else be surprised in a very rude way :-p

Solid ideas.

I think having both Reveal and Taunt on your pets F2 is redundant though. If you land the taunt, the stealthed foe is going to reveal their self as they are forced to attack your pet.

Well-played.

Your opponents deserved those spankings for how they played :-p

Glad you gave them what they deserved

The thieves need their Thief Cards revoked ;-)

That 0.5 – 1 second is incorrect.

First, the cooldown doesn’t start until the Rapid Fire finishes or is interrupted. The channel is 2.5 seconds in itself.

10s with 66% reduction gives you a 3.33… cooldown … or 6.66… seconds taken off
8s with 66% reduction gives you a 2.66… cooldown.

Or you can assume you’ll get that same 6.66 seconds taken off so 8s – 6.66 gives you a 1.33… second cooldown.

So, at best, you’ll

• Swap
• Channel Rapid Fire for 2.5 seconds.
• Wait 1.33… seconds
• Channel Rapid Fire for 2.5 seconds.

That’s decent damage, but over a 6.33… second duration at best. Most Dueling Mesmers will laugh at this though because they’ll have 1.5 seconds of reflection every time they evade and Rapid Fire is stupid easy to get evades on. The Rapid Fires can also still be interrupted, blocked, etc. … that huge list of counters.

It is nice though. I’m sure it’ll continue being the noob slayer it has been since the initial Rapid Fire buff.

It’s cooldown reduction once every 10s at best.

It is a very simple mechanic at its core, so if it winds up being OP/UP it should be very simple for ArenaNet to simply tweak the % cooldown reduction from it to be lower/higher.

@Ansau:
Yep, damage is great. You might want to inhibit your opponents’ ability to strike back as well though if you’re able.

Sure, you and your opponent can just slug it out and not care about mitigating each other’s abilities (I’m still surprised when I see how little reflection I see when two sides are shooting projectiles at each other) … but it’s very nice to do a little here and there to make it so that only you are throwing out the damage. That’s a bit of an advantage.

Again, I’m not saying that Mesmers can just take on a zerg … but not they can possibly do more than Reflection, Boon Removal, Portal, etc. … it’s another possible option in our bag of tricks.

If nothing else, I’m going to camp a narrow bridge with some boon removal and my focus and throw people off it

Don’t forget wrapping the weapon traits into nice little one-trait bundles?

How many longbow Rangers wanted Read the Wind, Eagle Eye, -20% cd, and Piercing Arrows? Now they’ve got it!

How many Shortbow Rangers wanted more than Piercing Arrows and -20%cd without having to go into two separate trees? Now they’ve got it plus some additional bonuses to the Shortbow!

How about combining Greatsword’s fury-on-crit with its -20% cd and its +%dmg … now we have it!

Combining all the trap traits into one trait so you can still invest in other aspects of the class? You’ve got it!

The list goes on and on.

When you see people complaining, just look at what it is they are complaining about. Many are not really valid … some are though. Just have to read and think about them. The ones that are are often those where the OP has actually thought about it before just typing/spewing.

I disagree with your statement about them not caring.

• The success of the game dictates the success of their jobs … they want things to be successful … especially for such a largely played class
• They were no less professional for Ranger than for other classes. They were cutting up for all classes. By the time they got to Ranger, they had already been streaming for 3.5 hours and had joked quite a bit during that time.

Your other points:
Revive Traits
Everyone has them. They aren’t mandatory for anyone. If you don’t like them, don’t take them. Please see Durzlla in a dueling arena for 2v2s and he’ll show you how ridiculous these traits can already be in particular support builds … in a 2v2 no less. I can tell you it was a pain in the butt fighting him and one other in a 2v2 when he played that build.

Pets Have Separate Scaling
You are complaining about one of the most powerful options available to Rangers. Since the scaling is separate, you can have your pet be glassy, tanky, etc. regardless of what you are.

• If you want both of you to be glassy, you can still do that.
• If you want both of you to be tanky, you can do that.
• if you want one of you to be one and the other be the opposite … you can do that.

You are complaining about being given more options … seriously?!

Traps Activation Time
They mentioned that they will be tweaking traps in order to balance this out. Given that you have no clue what those tweaks are going to be, you are jumping the gun here and just giving a baseless/useless opinion. Have some patience/intelligence and wait and see what the changes are before you complain about them.

Additionally, this is VERY helpful for Rangers with Trapper runes as they now know they won’t have to worry for X seconds about their trap being triggered and breaking their stealth. Currently, that is an issue as currently a Trapper ranger can have their stealth immediately broken if the trap they just dropped to gain stealth is triggered and deals damage.

Spirits
Yes, I agree that Spirits are still sub-par. That being said, they didn’t touch the one GM Spirit trait. I imagine there is a big, fat “yet” for that. We also don’t know if the Druid specialization will do something for them. Just saying … thematically that would make sense.

Bearbow Machine Gunner
Are we really complaining about the jokes they are making about the dumb posts people make about classes? Are you word-policing people now? Just ./sigh

Synergy with Pets
If you haven’t figured out the various synergies with your pet, then you are obviously at a low level of play with your Ranger. Figuring out how to properly use your pet is a staple of a good Ranger.

Canine Howl → Swap → Other Canine starts w/ knockdown → other Canine Howl → Muddy Terrain —> Entangle —> Knockback/Daze (weapon dependent). Oh my, I just combined my pets’ CC with my own. There’s some great synergy there.

Axe + Fortifying Bond to easily get 25 stacks of Might on your pet … synergy.

Cripple from your pet in order to trigger Predator’s Onslaught even when your current weapon doesn’t cripple.

The list goes on an on based on build, weapon sets, and pets. It just requires some thought … which is a large part of why I love it.

Pet Stagnation
That’s great that you’d like to have some new pets. You’re not the only one. Is it really required? I don’t think so. It would be nice, but it’d be nice for everyone to be getting more options for their class mechanics as well. This is one of those “my wishlist wasn’t completely answered” cries.

“No Change Lolz”
Perhaps you didn’t realize that (1) Some people were people sarcastic and (2) some people are flat out stupid.

Are you incapable of looking at the multitude of compiled lists of changes? There are so many changes for Ranger that are outstanding that if you truly believe “no changes lolz” then I’m sorry but <insert obvious>.

Past Patches
As others have stated, if you believe this then you simply aren’t paying attention … or it’s another “my specific wishlist items weren’t done”. The latter is just childish. Please read the book “Winning Ways”. There is often more than one correct answer … and ArenaNet has access to far more information about player gameplay and the direction of the game than you do.

I’m horribly disappointed by the OP.

@Heimskarl:
Aye, if you’ve read a fraction of my posts on the Ranger forums, then you know I’m right there with you with wanting boon removal on my Ranger. I want that so darn badly.

Don’t discount our lovely Drakehound either. That AOE immobilize on a base 20 second cooldown is pretty darn nice … be even nicer when it’s a 16 second cooldown just for picking Beastmastery

If trying to get us away from the dog pets was their intent, I’m curious to see if it works. The canines still have their non-F2 cripple & knockdown and they are made of sturdier material than cats/birds while having good power (like Drakes).

The canines also might be better at landing Beastly Warden given the AOE nature of their F2 as opposed to the more cone-shaped nature of other F2s like the Drakes’.

I’m with you on Quickening Zephyr. It’s so useful and it provides Rangers with the highest uptime on Quickness of any class in the game … not counting Mesmer Quickness on-interrupt which will be getting kitten ICD.

Most of this build can already be taken with the current trait system (apparently Ehecatl has been using it or something similar too), so if you want to get a feel for it, just put on some Cleric or Settler(sPvP)/Apothecary(WvW) gear and try it out.

If Protective Ward is only providing the protection to the pet, I agree, it is still a good trait given the Weakness. a 50% chance to fumble and do 50% damage is a 25% damage reduction … before you factor in the fact that a fumbled attack can’t crit … so it’s actually more … by how much is dependent on your opponent’s stats :-)

I think I’d probably stick with the Natural Healing over the extra Weakness, especially if I’m already running an Axe with the condition version. That extra healing can’t be cleansed and you have plenty of ways to remove poison. Healing is pretty darn powerful. Even more so when you can buy it extra time via kiting, evading, etc. so you can quickly jump back on your opponent who likely didn’t heal nearly as much and is being worn down by you and your pet.

I agree that Beastly Warden could be a fantastic trait. We’ll have to wait and see the numbers though. I think this build could benefit from any of those 3 Beastmastery GM traits.

A nice side-effect of Beastly Warden is that we could take some pets whose F2 isn’t a CC like the Canines’ and turn it into a CC on top of what it already does.

@Lugh:
What build are you comparing against? Please look at the the build I posted. It has Beastmastery. That means it has all those same things you just mentioned. That makes all but your last paragraph moot :-/

If you’re comfortable with starting fights with abilities on cooldowns, that is your perogative. Perhaps you too already have experience with it and were fine with it. My personal experience with it was that it was sub-optimal.

@Quadox:
I believe they were referencing the instant teleport (w/ dmg and immob) that is Infiltrator’s Strike from Thief Sword. That puppy doesn’t even need line of sight … which works well (for the thief) with its associated Infiltrator’s Return.

Menaka.5092:

What, 5 mesmers in wvw? In the same map? In the same party?!
In EU Silver and Bronze it would be quite a rare sight (not sure about gold nowadays)

Hey, it’s not my fault if your server has a bad case of the stupids :-p

@LughLongArm.5460:
My issue with that is that you will be entering fights with your heal and some utilities already on cooldown because you wanted 100% up-time on swiftness and the weapon swap and pet swap only work in combat.

Speaking from experience having done this with just my heal on my Mesmer with Centaur Runes … this can be a pain in your back-side.

I still assert that those shouts are lackluster and don’t make up for the Regeneration they are giving you. Signets and Survival are still our best utilities. Now, if our shouts get some changes … you can bet I’ll be revisiting this.

I imagine that if you were facing a Mesmer like mine that you’d be a sad camper because I take pride in stripping boons from players so that would leave you with the lackluster shouts.

While a good player can negate Entangle, it is on a drastically shorter cooldown. Traited, entangle is a 48s cooldown while traited RAO is a 96s cooldown. That’s two entangles for every RAO.

Additionally, it’s not just entangle that your opponent is having to counter. They have to deal with:

• Drakehound KD
• Drakehound Immob
• Wolf KD
• Wolf Fear
• Muddy Terrain
• Hilt Bash

All of that on top of Entangle.

Anyone else here bring enough stunbreaks and condition clears for all that? Very few do. Even less when you factor in cripple from the pets, Vulnerability from Maul, and possibly other conditions based on what you want to pair with your Greatsword in this build.

Additionally, a build that can deal with all of that CC is a build that is likely suffering damage-wise in other locations. This is where your added survivability from Wilderness Survival kicks in even more.

I think the swiftness on pet is nearly negligible when you have beastmastery. If you check the wiki you’ll see that Agility Training (the current +30% pet movespeed) does not stack with other movespeed bonuses … so your pet is only gaining +3% movespeed from swiftness. It’s something but not much … and they don’t negate cripple/chill/immobilize.

You have an enormous amount of healing from:

• Regeneration
• Natural Healing (check wiki, it heals the Ranger too)
• Signet of the Wild
• Troll Unguent

NOTE: You can already get this as a Ranger with the current trait system.

Your healing is protected from poison by:

• Cleanses from all your survival skills
• Removing poison when you dodge roll

NOTE: You can already get this as a Ranger with the current trait system.

You have quite a large amount of damage mitigation via:

• Protection on dodge rolls
• Protection every 12s when hit
• Weakness every 12s when hit
• 5% damage reduction when you have Regeneration
• 50% damage reduction when your health is above 90%

While the Barkskin here is a bit easier to “get through” with a different threshold than it’s current form, an opponent now has to first get past your combination of heals and Barkskin to get you below 90% hp as opposed to before needing to get through them in order to finish you from 25% to 0%. This can be beneficial in that the previous Barkskin could be somewhat mitigated by those classes with +%dmg against foes with health below a threshold.

My two favorite weapon sets for this are:

The tankiest version w/ Greatsword / Sword + Dagger due to the sheer amount of evasion and mobility you get. When you have this much healing, merely chaining the blocks and heals together is often enough to get you back on your feet and induce a face-reddening rage in your opponent(s). It also benefits from poison on the Sword and Dagger so you can out-sustain many other similar tanky builds. The Sword is great for sticking to your target while buffing your pet and helping them also stick to your target. With the sword you are essentially “tackling” your target and holding them for your pet to utterly destroy.

The more damaging version w/ Shortbow / Axe + Dagger due to the condition damage that you can put out with this puppy. It has less evasion, but it still has some poison to from Dagger. The Axe, Dagger, and Shortbow can kite pretty well between the Chill and 2 Cripples. The Axe Chill also causes your pet to apply more weakness to your target. Lol!

Named after Durzlla mentioned during one dueling night that watching my tanky build was like watching The Terminator as they kept throwing damage at me and I just kept ignoring it and coming on.

I see potential for even more ridiculous tankiness for our beloved Ranger class with the new Specializations.

Wilderness Survival

• Minor: Natural Vigor – Increases 25% endurance regeneration.
• Minor: Companion’s Defense – You and your pet gain protection when you dodge roll.
• Minor: Bark Skin – You and your pet take 50% less damage while your health is above the threshold (90%).
• Adept: Ambidexterity – Gain 150 condition damage while wielding a torch or dagger. Torch and Dagger skills recharge 20% faster.
  – or -
  Adept: Expertise Training – Pets deal 350 extra condition damage and have their condition durations increased by 20%.
• Master: Oakheart Salve – Gain regeneration when you suffer from bleeding, poison or burning. While you have regeneration you take 5% reduced damage.
• Grandmaster: Wilderness Knowledge – Use Sharpening Stone when you strike a foe below the health threshold (75%). Survival skills have 20% reduced recharge and remove 2 conditions.

Nature Magic

• Minor: Rejuvenation – Gain regeneration when you health drops below the threshold (75%)
• Minor: Fortifying Bond – Any boon you get is shared with your pet.
• Minor: Lingering Magic – Boons applied by your and your pets last longer.
• Adept: Nature’s Wrath – Gain 10% power based on your healing. Your pet gains extra stats.
  – or -
  Adept: Bountiful Hunter – You and your pet deals 1% more damage per boon on you.
• Master: Evasive Purity – Dodging removes blindness, cripple, and poison from you
• Grandmaster: Protective Ward – When you receive damage nearby foes are weakened and you gain protection

Beastmastery

• Minor: Instinctual Bond – When you are downed, your pet gains quickness
• Minor: Loud Whistle – Reduce recharge on pet skills and swapping by 20%.
• Minor: Pet’s Prowess – Pets move 30% faster and deal more damage on critical hits.
• Adept: Rending Attacks – Pets inflict bleeding when they critically hit with their basic attacks.
• Master: Natural Healing – Your pet gains natural health regeneration and improved healing (+350)
• Grandmaster: Beastly Warden – Your pet taunts foes near them when executing a command [F2] ability
  – or -
  Grandmaster: Zephyr’s Speed – You and your pet gain might and quickness when you swap pets.
  – or -
  Grandmaster: Honed Axes – Gain 150 ferocity while wielding an axe in your main hand. Winter’s Bite is now AoE. Axe skills recharge 20% faster.

Skills 6 through 10
Healing = Troll Unguent
Utility #1 = Muddy Terrain
Utility #2 = Lightning Reflexes
Utility #3 = Signet of the Wild
Elite = Entangle

You can run this as a power build in Cleric’s gear or as a Condition build in Apothecary’s. * Power will benefit from the conversion of Healing Power to Attack Power.

• Condition will benefit from the fact that condition builds don’t really need Precision/Ferocity the same way that Power builds do in order to have good DPS.

For Pets, I recommend taking Canines (they have good power and solid CC) or Birds/Cats. Whatever you take, it’s going to be powerful due to you taking Beastmastery but also because of the extra stats from Nature’s Wrath.

I don’t think CC is going to be the answer against any Thief with Acrobatics … 30 ICD on their trait that stunbreaks the CC and refills their Endurance. So unless you think you can CC them twice very quickly and/or quite often, you’re going to simply refill their endurance which will be a pain in your butt … especially given that that same Acrobatics Thief is going to have Vigor that is 20% more effective than anyone else’s in the game.

I like the idea of combining the throw and bonfire into one ability.

That would then allow the other ability to work like a Ranger preparation … for the next X seconds your attacks inflict Burning.

This seems plausible given that the Guardians have a Torch skill (Zealot’s Flame) that burns targets around them every pulse.

I’d also be fine (see: friggin love) the boon removal that was suggested :-p

Might not be complete … or it might be a way for our pets to apply conditions even more. Birds and Cats have very high precision values. They could largely benefit from a 100% and 66% chance to bleed on-crit. That’s 0 to 2 bleeds per crit. With the +CondDmg and +CondDuration trait, this could be even meaner.

@Cufufalating:
I understand

Some of us have been Theorycrafting during our late night duels, and we got onto the idea of several Rangers with Healing Spring (don’t know its type yet) and Horns. That’s several blast finishers, group regen, and group condition cleanse.

Runes of the Pack on several Rangers could be ridiculous.

What would be more ridiculous is a Remorseless Ranger paired with a Staff Mesmer. Let me direct you to Winds of Chaos:

• https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Winds_of_Chaos

That is the auto-attack on a staff which is now going to bounce an extra time given Illusionary Elasticity becoming base. That is the same attack that Mesmer Staff clones use. When it hits an ally, it gives them Might or Fury (so a 50% chance on Fury). With multiple staff clones a Ranger could be proccing Remorseless like a madman.

Even better, given the extra bounce and the fact that the Ranger will be in melee while the Mesmer can be up to 1,200 away, the Winds of Chaos will hit (target-ranger-target) for extra damage on the target and Might/Fury on the Ranger. With no ICD on Remorseless, this could be insanely good.

I’m waiting to see if Protective Ward stays the way it currently is worded … if it does, you can bet I’m going to try to incorporate that in just about every build I have. Protection on you + Weakness on nearby foes with that up-time would just be too darn good to pass up on.

@Lugh:
No worries.

I thinkittenufulating’s post highlights the difference between what we’re each doing. I don’t roam solo unless I’m just going to cap camps real quick to get my daily done. As such, the Perma-Swiftness is not enough in my mind to warrant me:

• Constantly putting my heal on cooldown for Swiftness (I did enough of this with my Mesmer with Centaur runes back in the day).
• Taking what I feel are sub-par utilities.

You are going to need to take more than the “good” shouts if you want that perma-swiftness. That means Guard is going to plague your bar or you’re going to need to take Warhorn.

Your description of Sic’em is why I’m not a fan of it. It is like Rage As One … it either does something or it is negated and useless. Their cooldowns make this even worse in my mind.

While a Beastmaster Pet is more likely to take that damage, I don’t want to likely cripple my pet.

Additionally, I’ve found that good opponents know how to get away from those “big” abilities that have long cooldowns. For example, if I pop Rage As One against a good Thief, they are going to play “rope-a-dope” with me for those 20s and then fight me knowing that my elite is on a long cooldown. Same with anyone with stealth and/or more mobility or some terrain to take advantage of … or a nice number of active defenses (block/evade/distortion/immunity/etc.).

That’s a good point about poison and Troll Unguent. However, with more condition cleanses and Troll Unguent being a 2 cleanse itself, I think it is less of an issue for the Survival build than it is for the Skirmishing Shout build. Your regeneration up-time is going to be good, but it can suffer from that same poison … and most classes that have poison are covering it with several other conditions (look at Ranger, Engineer, and Necromancer for great examples).

I think Muddy Terrain is an excellent ability. It can help you get the kill or give you breathing room. It’s also on a darn good low cooldown which allows you to constantly pressure with it (on top of Fury and cleansing).

I often like to take Quickening Zephyr and Lightning Reflexees with the Survival Cleanse simply because it gives me two utilities that are both a stunbreak and cleanse. This can be quite important when dealing with some classes that can both stun you and immobilize you in a very small window (or simultaneously). SoR can do this, but it requires your pet for the condition cleanse. It should be alive and near you (especially since melee), but it’s possible that it won’t be. Those times suck.

@Cufufalating:
I only take Moas when I’m being silly. They need some improvement before I’m likely to change my mind on this. I don’t want to wait for that long cast time with its long cooldown. I’d rather have my canines with their 2 KDs, 2 Cripples, 1 Fear, and 1 Immobilize. Those are so useful it isn’t even funny … plus they have more Power than Moas so hit harder.

@OP:
Not everyone is crying. You just have some very loud people “crying”.

Thankfully, there are still plenty of people trying to have actual discussions. Some of the PvE concerns are very good points. Others are being overly dramatic <_<

That being said, +1 for the cupcake on the toolbar.

@Levetty
It’s not whether or not you’re right/wrong … it’s how you come across … some have tried to explain that to you.

Sometimes you make very good points. I like these posts.

Other times you don’t. I’m not a fan of these posts because …

Practically every time you post you’re antagonistic. That is the issue.

@Heimskarl Ashfiend:
Oh my gosh, you’re a genius. Rage would make the up-time on Fury even more of a non-issue … but Evasion would be ridiculously awesome.

Evasion would give you more control over when you gain that Fury (as opposed to chance-on-hit) while also giving you Swiftness and Crippling your opponent(s) which is quite useful for someone with a Greatsword who wants to stick to their target.

As long as the damage from the cripple on the dodge roll happens before Opening Strike (i.e. iOpening Strike isn’t wasted on the damage from that cripple), that would be amazing.

@Cufufalating:
Given that there isn’t any more +%Condition Duration from traits/specializations … and I don’t believe they had any food on them … and doubt that they were wielding Giver weapons, it is fairly safe to assume it is now a 3 second bleed.

… though we don’t know what runes/sigils they were wearing … but you’d need +50% duration for it to change from 2s to 3s.

I honestly don’t think we need any other way to give our pets Fury. We have the Horn, now several other traits, and fortifying bond. Our pets should be fairly solid in that area.

Okay, I have a bit more time now … had to cut off that last post early.

@Lugh:
I’m sure your Shout build is solid and you will rock with it … but here are my personal issues with it compared to the Survival build.

Keeping Fury up is a non-issue. With 15s of Fury on pet swap (30s ICD) as well as Fury for using your heal/utilities/elite as well as Fury from 50% of greatsword hits (10s ICD) … as well as possibly from your runes … keeping up Fury on your Ranger should not be an issue. The only issue is reapplication of Fury as that is what is going to proc Remorseless to give you more Opening Strikes.

My biggest issue with using Skirmishing to get Remorseless from Fury is that it is getting it from weapon swap.

• You can get auto-crit on weapon-swap from Sigil of Intelligence. It isn’t an opening strike so won’t give 5 Vulnerability and won’t have the +25% damage … but it’s also 3 auto-crits on weapon swap. That’s 2 more than what you get from gaining Fury with Furious Grip and I’d argue that it’d more than account for not getting the +25% damage on that first crit.
• My personal opinion is that you should be weapon swapping in order to pick the best weapon for the current situation, not to try to proc something … even if you are running dual melee.

You get more control over your Fury from having 5 abilities (Heal, 3 Utilities, Elite) all with 20% cd reduction than you do from weapon swap alone … not to mention if the traits continue to work like they do now, the proc of Keen Edge is going to continue to Trigger the Fury and Cleanse effect like it currently does when you take Keen Edge and SotF with the current Trait system.

• Troll Unguent = Fury ever 20s
• Muddy Terrain = Fury every 20s
• Lightning Reflexes = Fury every 32s
• Sharpening Stone = Fury every 36s
• Entangle = Fury every 48s

On top of this, it allows you to chain those Fury applications together if you want. Even better is the fact that Entangle and Muddy Terrain will immobilize your target so you are much more likely to land that crit than against a non-CC’d target.

I feel shouts are weak because:

• Troll Unguent gives more healing than Heal As One
• Our other shouts are Sic’em, Guard, Protect Me, and Search and Rescue … which provide far less utility than our Survival (and Signet) skills … only two can even currently be argued as “good” … except if running a support role (Search & Rescue) which this build isn’t designed for … and that ability has a long cooldown.
• For condition removal, you are pigeon-holed into use Soldier runes and/or Cleansing Sigil … Cleansing Sigil again has you doing weapon swaps for a reason other than swapping to the best weapon for the current situation.
• For condition removal, you are only removing one condition per shout as opposed to 2 conditions per Survival skill … given that most condition players are smart enough to try to protect their critical conditions with other miscellaneous conditions, this is quite critical to be able to cleanse more than one at a time.

arkealia.2713:

RaO gives fury every 3s, seems like a great boost with Remorseless.

That is a very good point. 20s so we’ll get the initial Fury + about 6 more for a total of 7. There is no doubt that that is quite powerful.

I just have two issues with it:

(1)
It has a 120s cooldown (96 traited for 20% cd reduction). While it’s extremely powerful, I’m not a huge fan of long cooldowns. Just a personal preference.

(2)
Working with the Fury every 3s to make sure you’re using a “big” hit for each moment of opportunity. This does lend itself well to using Quick Draw in Skirmishing though as it will allow you to double-dip with two Mauls before needing to swap to something like Sword + Axe for a Path of Scars.

I just prefer Entangle over RAO. Whenever I have SotF on my bar, my Survival skills always include Muddy Terrain and Entangle. Being able to immobilize your opponent is just so powerful in this game as it can give you a breather and/or allow you to land some solid blows on your opponent(s). Krytan Drakehound, Wolf, Muddy Terrain, Entangle, and Hilt Bash. That’s an enormous amount of CC which can be just as, if not more powerful, than just straight up damage.

A fight is, after all, racing their health to 0 before they get yours to 0. If you can both slow down their damage while speeding yours up … that is quite effective

@Lugh
You’re being antagonistic. I’m merely trying to have a discussion. Please realize that and check your tone conveyed by your posts

If I miss something, please realize that I’m reading and posting in between compiling code and booting up test servers at work.

The damage is undoubtedly solid.

My concern is it is squishy, but I believe you’re quite well-aware of that. From the bits of your video I saw (I didn’t watch straight through … I’m at work) I noticed that you were always with teammates. There is nothing wrong with that and I believe that is what this build should do … +1 and quickly end the fights.

I think at the higher skill levels a good Thief could ruin your day though. You have two dodge rolls and then you’re hosed. Against a class that even Mesmers have trouble shaking, that is going to be rough.

This could happen with other builds as well. I can promise you my Mesmer build would come out of stealth in your face to quickly down you … but I am always watching for “who is tanky/glassy” on the other team so I know who to target … you would definitely be near the top of that list with this build :-p

The build is seemingly cooldown dependent. For the numbers you mention, you are having to spend quite a few utilities to get it. That works wonderfully against a golem and some players, but others will know how to handle that.

I think Frost Spirit could be dropped and replaced with just about anything else that isn’t a spirit or shout and the build would improve. With the current base 35% proc chance, you’re only gaining 3.5% damage from it and it is prone to simply dying in PvP.

In PvE, this could work solidly. You’ll suffer the same issues that other people that range PvE do, but it by no means is a deal-breaker for most groups which aren’t even making use of the primary reasons for stacking.