Guild Wars 2

chill all the time and gain might to gain health when hitting a target in RS…can see some insane health regen in RS…with vuln on chill and extra crit for vuln and all the vuln stacking we have in pvp reapers can use the valk ammy

Also GS and vampiric…100hp a hit? or 150 a crit if you have vamp prec…they sure did add a lot of sustain.

Also interested to see exactly how much chill we can get and if we get more blinds for chilling dark. If we can constantly reapply chill then it would be great in team fights. Besides all chills should be covered with vulnerability so more condi removal will have to be used.

DarkMezmer.5198:

Sigmoid.7082:

IMA call minion reaper now then. With death nova , the reduced damage from poisoned and chilled foes., inate death shroud damage reduction and protection. You will only take 28% of the damage you usually would with minions and yourself leeching.

^My thoughts exactly when I read the blogpost. Just imagine MM actually jumping into a team fight at graveyard with their golem, bone minions, and using the Rise shout to summon 5 horrors and then have them all die just to get 8 death novas exploding all over the point. The poison carnage will be real.

You will have 7 or 7 death novas which will all do around 1~2k damage. not only that but with the 5 target aoe cleave you will do a tone of damage even in a non damage ammy. Not to mention huge toughness and 50% damage reudction out of death shroud with protection on a chilled and poisoned foe.

Thing i see as being a possibility is leech builds, minion builds, minion leech builds, chill builds, power, massive aoe vuln stacking builds.

One thing i had a though on is how the reaper shroud 1 will work. if its a single attack then ok but if its multi hit then it would proc dhuumfire multiple times as well as unyielding. More vuln and burn stacking.

Not sure how they will do a defiance bar guys since if there was a trait that did it it would make foot in redundant.

IMA call minion reaper now then. With death nova , the reduced damage from poisoned and chilled foes., inate death shroud damage reduction and protection. You will only take 28% of the damage you usually would with minions and yourself leeching.

The way i see its its just like the different variants of the rock paper scissors game. Sure there are more options and more things can beat you but there are more things that you will be able to counter.

Old builds and play styles will still be viable since elite specs will be in line with everything else. Chronomancer may counter some current builds but any build with heavy aoe will shut down their f5 quite well for example. So not only does it add to the game on a new level it also makes playstyles that currently exist but are under used able to be taken into consideration and considered viable.

The more specs are added the more outcomes you are adding to your rock paper scissors. See this site to get what i mean : http://mentalfloss.com/article/16253/advanced-rock-paper-scissors-rps-variants

Shouts because team support is what we lack or spirits because of how she infused her sword with her dead sister.

Would be good team support as a spirit then when its active is used we Infuse it into outer weapon and get an effect for a while.

djooceboxblast.9876:

Sigmoid.7082:

Don’t all on entering death shroud abilities now trigger the actual skill and thus have a cool down now? If this is true they should remove the cool down on it and allow us to enter it as log as we have 10% life force.

Will not happen! They would have to balance ds traits and i do not think the cd is a problem

Wells should have their durations and cool time lowered.
Wells are fine as they are apart from WoD and WoB! Well of darkness could use a buff even though it does get some buffs through traits in hot (Can apply vulnerability and chill through chilling darkness and bitter chill). Well of bloods cd is way too long compared to the effectiveness of the heal.

Unholy sanctuary should be %base+healing power scaling.
If healing through death shroud doesnt become baseline then Unholy sanctuary should be changed to do this.

Life blast needs to be winder or bounce instead of pierce so unyielding blast becomes more useful.
Life blast is fine as is.. Could use a reduction in aftercast

Fair enough.

True it does get a buff but I do feel they would benefit from being able to be used more. Maybe even having their radius increased via traits. Marks, traps, and symbols all do.

Well at least the same widow of deflecting shot. Since sometimes even if targets are stacked if one is too tall it will center aim that one and miss all the others.

Don’t all on entering death shroud abilities now trigger the actual skill and thus have a cool down now? If this is true they should remove the cool down on it and allow us to enter it as log as we have 10% life force.

Wells should have their durations and cool time lowered.

Unholy sanctuary should be %base+healing power scaling.

Life blast needs to be winder or bounce instead of pierce so unyielding blast becomes more useful.

i take everything back. our spec better have some sweet stuff. but knowing anet, how they treat this class the live stream for its ready up will be underwhelming and the mechanics will be terrible. oh but i fully expect DH to get nerfed before its released. There is no way some of those skills will be released in their current states.

only one thing i took from this is that burn will do a decent amount of damage so dhuumfire will tick for a nice amount. so thats something for condi necros.

i expect it to get nerfed since it seems to strong in its current incarnation. they even said its good to start strong and whittle down.

besides that overall the skill functionality looks great. but yeah those numbers will be nerfed no doubt about it.

The new elite specs gave classes access to things they were never supposes to have or lacked due yo their designdesign not as a class problem. Classes were supposed to have things they aren’t supposed to do so people would play a variety of things and could cover each others weaknesses.

Guardians lacked a ranged weapon and ways to apply conditions. Look what they got? A ranged weapon and traits/ skills that apply conditions outside of burning. Not only that but they retained the core supportiveness of the class while gaining new play options.

Mesmers. They lacked ways to put out aoe pressure and they got wells. Not only that but the wells are also supportive granting boons and CD reduction. New play option while retaining a core design of the class.

Us? What do we lack? Mobility and team support and decent cleave. This is why people say we will get shouts and GS and the new DS mechanic will have mobility and support on them, no doubt they will also be coupled with boon/condition control and debilitating effects and a 5 target limit for skills and the autos. We get a new play option while retaining core class functionality.

Also druids will get glyphs. Calling it now.

Charblaze.6958:

Softspoken.2410:

Charblaze.6958:

Every time someone says that necro has a second healthbar a kitten dies.
Every. Single. Time.

I’m curious, what’s the preferred categorization of Death Shroud’s defensive capabilities then? It’s not like it’s a period of invulnerability, or extra dodges. It’s also not nothing, even if general consensus is that it’s not enough.

It isn’t a health bar because:

• Health bars are always full at start while life force is empty
• Health bars don’t drain over time.
• Health bars don’t prevent healing.

It isn’t an invulnerability because:

• You are still being hit by CC and conditions.
• It doesn’t scales with the number of enemies.

What’s the closest thing to death shroud?

• Life force drains like the downed bar.
• You are locked out of your skills and utilities as if you were downed.
• You can’t use your heal when you are downed.
• CC and conditions are effective against downed players.
• The downed state doesn’t scales with the number of opponents either.

So what is death shroud? Death shroud is a downed state.
You can use it only to buy time, hoping the situation turns in your favour, with little to no control on the outcome… exactly like when you are downed. Fun fact: death shroud was the necromancer’s downed state before being lazily promoted to profession mechanic during development.

The whole profession is balanced around the 2nd health bar idea, while we really have a glorified downed state, and it’s supposed to cover for the lack of invulnerability and mobility. How can you fix this mess without completely reworking death shroud?

Our profession mechanic is to enter and exit a downed state at will. Next time you are wondering why death shroud is so hated ask yourself “Do I enjoy being downed?”.

Truer words have never been spoken.
My eyes have been opened.
+100

the synergy with our current skill set would be pretty good when the changes go through. Lay down a well then use axe #3 and SS to blast it twice. Could get 2 aoe blinds. Meaning if traited with the new chilling dark its about 5s of aoe chill. Then bitter chill for 10 stacks of aoe vulnerability while granting yourself retaliation and 13s of cripple, removing 2 boons and doing just over a full lifeblasts worth of damage in a 600 aoe radius.
Aoe pressure, boon removal, team support, debuffing/cover conditions .

No idea why it hasnt been done yet. It makes perfect sense. Even the animation..

Can see us getting spirits that have an effect when placed than and be absorbed using the follow up skill granting the next X attacks a bonus.

Sorta like a spirit venom.

Axe 3 is on its knees praying that it becomes a blast finisher.
Dagger 5 isnt far behind either.

You have no idea what the necro elite spec is going to be. Stop with the sky is falling kitten till we know what all classes are getting and till we know the full set of changes that are coming to skills and the actual numbers of all skills in HOT.

Geez people.

What if axe was like the following?

The auto attack working similar to wave of wrath for guards. Axe auto would hit targets in an area infront of the player and it would have a might tighter cone.
Rending claws
Damage targets in an area infront of the player.
Deal vulnerability on the final strike.
5 Targets

Ghastly claws
Rapidly slash your tareget and surrounding area.
same damage
120~240 radius.

Unholy feast
Just add a blast finisher.

Then axe mastery could be changed to 0.5~1% per target hit. Meaning the cooldown on the trait would be useful.

A fee other classed get upgrades to boons and conditions. Theif gets poison and vigour, ranger gets poison, guards get burning.

Based of this concept and the dev talk about how they want us to get hit I believe we should have the following.

Spiteful spirit
Cast unholy feast when entering death shroud.
Increase the effectiveness of retaliation 33%
Or
7% reduced damage under the effects of retaliation.

Anyone else looking forward to spiteful spirit since you can essentially double cast unholy feast. Perma retal as well as huge aoe damage. very useful for aoe pressure in a team fight alone with wells. also synergizes with axe mastery well which is pretty cool.

I see so much potential in the new system since it means a rework of all skills since they are getting a type and all traits. We can finally see some useless traits rolled in or changed in favour of better ones.

To me the new system seems streamlined and worthy and a great opportunity for Anet to balance the game! Also stats not being tied to trains means better build diversity and state diversity. You can get traits and no longer be lumbered with useless stats that ccoe with the line. It all makes sense to me. ets just see how they rework each trait line and class first before.

Only downsince is you must pick 3 instead of ranging between all 5 as you can and some builds do now, like meta medi guard. steamlined but hey you win some you ls some. in some cases its more free and its other its more restrictive but it should allow for better balance and trait introduction so we could potentially see them adding new specs all together thats arent elite specs.

halfing the duration to 3s would be fine. giving classes that dont have poison such a high uptime of it doesnt seem correct.

Plague signet also works off their condi damage iirc so I am to understand so builds like bleed ranger and mtd mesmerism really kill themselves. Nobody likes 3k condi ticks as well as huge power damage coming right at heir face. Really enjoying this build

if i am getting this right you lurk in axe and when the time is right and it cant be dodges you switch to dagger and see if you can land the dark pact -> reapers touch -> auto combo since if you manage to proc quickness if that time you will get the dark pact damage , all 3 reapers touch hits and then 2 full auto attack chains plus a chill of death. full damage from skills of just under 11 coefficient wise so around 4 full backstabs worth of damage if it all lands. Pretty huge burst. If it all lands even heavy armour classes will take a huge amount of damage, 7~16k, and light armour classes will die from around 13-26k damage.

Also feel this does better against boon heavy classes since axe 3, focus 5, spite X and corrupt boon all remove/convert boons. Not to mention it gives us some access to poison uptime which helps in some fights.

I gave this a try opposed to the normal power build and I found it extremely enjoyable. I do feel the signets do allow me to have more pressure against certain classes especially the boon heavy classes. Well of corruption takes a while to strip opposed to CB so that’s nice. Signet is good since the extra power is always welcome and the condis it puts on provide great utility and usually can force the opponent to play a certain way. Weakness uptime is also so welcome.

I tried them and compared to using pack runes the damage under 50% isn’t much higher but you damage above is much lower. Not to mention your average damage out of DS is lower to as you have no fury or bonus crit from pack #6.
Also much much less mobility as less swiftness uptime.

Its possible but by my calculation the target needs like 20 stacks of vulnerability and you need to be maxed out on might along with having over 50% life force, ogre or strength runes and the target to be below 50% health and 1800 armour.

Ragion.2831:

4k rune of air? seriously? didn’t seem to hit that high to me when i tried it but then again i didnt check combat logs

Yeah have hit a medi guard for 3k and downed him and then a pew ranger for just under 4.5k under 50% and that killed him in comvi with cod and two sigil procs. Like over 10k in an instant. Hit bunkier classes for Luke 1.5 to 2.5 k too so its not bad.

That’s the point of the build though. Either takes long enough for them get help or take two people to kill then in time opening up plays at other points.
At the very best you are looking at 20s to kill them if you interrupt the right things.

Save horn #4 for shelter since its unlockable. The heal doesn’t happen till the end and its one of those skills that goes on full cool down if it didn’t finish.
Try to fear the empower and then use dark pack and the boon removal well to kill their boons. I also use axe focus to keep the boon uptime low.

That’s how I generally do it. Takes a while but so much shorter if you interrupt the right skills. Also don’t sit in symbols to long. May be bunker but they add up.

I was just wondering about other runes besides the typical pack runes since they are good but there are so many runes and some seem to get forgotten so just testing things out.

I have had it hit for around 4k on squisky classes. It really helps with thrives since AFAIK it it frits it van process other things. The hit, sigils and tunes plus CoD all off that hit from being attacked is nice and I have killed a few people cause they didn’t expect the large hit.

Has anyone else tried it and has feedback or more opinions?

I may give vamp runes a go as well later on in the week when I have time and see how they work.

So I recently started on my necrosis as my ranger got boring and have been having great success with it in spvp.

I have done the standard power with pack runes and recently tried these out and have been having some success with them. Especially in 1v1 situations.

I was wondering what other people thought of the rune. I personally have had it hit bunkers for around 2k and glass for over 4k and to my knowledge it can proc on hit effects which is cool.

Just wanting others thoughts on it.

Thanks in advance everyone.

Maybe just remove the synergy between on price and % damage scaling skills since it allows huge damage. Think the biggest air and fire procs I have seen in PvP so far is around 2.3k+ air and 1.8k+ fire.

its pretty awesome. can get ticks of just over 1k with it.

Dragon.8762:

Why evasive purity over enlargement? Blindness is usually cured after just 1 hit unless your standing in blind spam which you shouldn’t be in anyways, and the poison is easily cured thanks to survival of the fittest. In the video when I was about to stomp that ranger in the last clip, enlargement could have actually stopped me from getting interrupted and knocked back from the Mesmer.

Simple. makes poison to disrupt your healing useless on you thus making you sustain better. Also removing blind lets you land some important skills after the roll for evasion such as winters bite or crippling talon, even shortbow interup.

Also it makes better use as for if you get condi bombed you can roll to remove 2 condis then survival skill for two more potentially removing more dangerous conditions like burning, high stacks of bleed/vulnerabilty and movement impairing conditions.

edit: Also…Doom Sigil.

Evasive purity > enlargement
Besides that I feel compared to the old build you had it should be more successful. Also experiment with travler runes see how they play out for you

Dragon.8762:

solrik.6028:

Dragon.8762:

Hey everyone,

This is the first Guild Wars 2 Video besides streaming that I’ve made and would like some pointers/ advice/ or anything else:

• Don’t use splitblade if you can’t hit with at least 3 of the 5 axes. You can bait the enemy to evade by using Stalker’s Strike, then use Splitblade.
• Always use Winter’s Bite, it both chills and makes your pet apply 10 seconds of weakness, which can be a big help. Time it either as the first attack when swapping to axe to make the damage-trading into your favor, or just before swapping to shortbow to give some breathing room with easier kiting.
• Don’t use concussion shot unless you want to intentionally interrupt a healing or something of value.
• Poison Volley should ever only be used in 2 cases: At long range just before the enemy is using a healing skill or at almost point blank ranger where you can hit with at least 3-4 of the shots.
• If you swap to Axe while still being at range, open up with Crippling Talon and then close in while either basic attacking to build your pet’s might¹ or sending away a Winter’s Bite. Then use the Stalker’s Strike -> Splitblade combo
• It is advantageous to use every condition applying skill on your weapons before using Entangle. Since you have Krait runes, you want to make sure that the Immobilise, Torment and Bleeding effects stay, so just spam your enemy full of other conditions.

¹ – The pet gets 10 seconds of Might whenever you get Might

Notes on the build:
Very defensive, but you can experiment with a few changes that do not necessarily reduce defense.

By changing Oakheart Salve to Offhand Training, you get access to more frequent Stalker’s Strike which now becomes a pretty decent gap closer. You would also get more frequent access to Crippling Talon with bleeding and cripple.

If you notice that you can stay above 5k health in most of the fights, you should remove 2 points from Wilderness Survival and dump them into Skirmishing to pick up Quick Draw (and the minor trait Furious Grip) which would lead to more procs from Sharpened Edges because of the fury on swap.

One last thing you absolutely must do:
Change Nature’s Bounty to Nature’s Protection because the only regeneration you have is Oakheart Salve. Troll Unguent has it’s own effect and it does not count as a Regeneration boon.

Good luck!

All good points, thanks for the advice.

The extra health regen also affects the rejuvenation trait under Nature Magic as well as Oakheart Salve. Contributing to about 17 seconds worth of passive regen once both are triggered which is often.
Oakheart could be replaced with off-handtraining, but I think the extra regen contributes greatly to the survival aspect of the build. The 2 second decrease on the dagger skills could be worth it though.
I have been looking at evasive purity. Maybe changing that to Nature’s protection? Or Enlargement? Enlargement looks very good to me.
The extra two points I invested into Wilderness survival for Bark skin is worth it. As for more crit chance, the fury you get thanks to the survival of the fittest trait on top of the passive crit chance is good enough instead of putting points into skirmishing.

I really appreciate the advice! I’ll adjust play style to spam bleeds first and other conditions and skills when the the situations present themselves.

You have no healing power for the regeneration so the 8 seconds of regen would be negated by 1 auto and to do that would be a 2 trait investment.
Taking natures protection instead of natures bounty and offhand training instead of oak heart…the 6s of protection and extra evasion do more for your survivability than 10s of regent. They will mitigate far more damage for yourself.
Seriously try it and you will be surprised how much longer you will live

There would be only a few changes i would make.
Traits:
I would change oak heart salve to anything else, probably offhand training or vigorous renewal. The extra evasion uptime either of those two would have you would be more useful. Also OHT allows dagger to have a huge poison uptime and allows better pressure since it homes in before you axe #2 and you can crippling talon from farther away.

Natures bounty to either natures protection or circile of life depending on if you are playing in a team or not. iirc natures protection procs before the damage is taken so could save your life there. Plus you only have 2 sources of regeneration so its nout that useful.
Also depending on the matchup you may want to swap barkskin/EB for poison master. The extra uptime and damage is useful for shutting down sustain classes.
Sigils:
On the axe i would change Earth to Geomancy since because of the bounces you cant be sure which target gets the bleed. Also better pressure since swap, #2 #5 is 11 stacks of bleed.
On the shortbow i would also probably change the leeching to the torment sigil. More condi damage and also more cover condis for your bleeds. Always a good thing.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Sigmoid.7082:

Tragic Positive.9356:

And Ranger has no immunity to conditions (has plenty of Cleanse if he traits for it, though… But if he traits for it, he has zero “Full cleanse” and can cleanse limited amount at a time only).

Signet of restoration is a full clense for you and your team.
On decent builds on a ranger you will lose 4 condis every 10s as long as your pet is alive and 1 every 10 if not. If there is anything you really need to remove you can use a survival skill.

If I’m correct, none of the viable builds traited for SotF include Signet of the Renewal. There’s no point in doing so. It’s a ridiculous overkill that way – and you’ll miss important utility or defense.

Moreover, decent Ranger builds you are talking about are condition / sustain based. From which almost none include SotF. Which makes the 4 condi cleanse every 10 seconds random (that is just awful and unreliable) and kind of forces the Ranger to go for the On-demand condi cleanse – which indeed is the SotR. Sadly – that will be the only real on-demand cleanse you’ll ever get – and will work only if your pet is within range (often requires a pet swap cooldown) and will kill the pet straight away.

Here I’ll mention that a full condi pressure ranger is still inferior to other Condi Bombing classes, Support Condi Ranger can either be a spirit Ranger or Regen Survival Ranger – that is vastly inferior to other supportive classes, especially the meta Eles, Guards and Engies.

From one perspective or another – Ranger has most of his abilities that sacrifice something for something (Traps are cool example – AoE condi pressure for any defense at all / Spirit Ranger – Support for lack of defense skills / Power Build – raw damage for anything else at all / Skills themselves usually sacrifice your pet, therefore sacrifice your damage and utility for soaking up damage like Protect me! or mentioned Signet of the Renewal / Plenty of abilities force you to swap your pet to be in range just to be effective = not allowing you to use others when you need them).

None of other classes suffer from such a design.
Prove me wrong.

Most builds I have seen run reflexes, restoration and stone. Cause not only is it condi clear but also a stun break.
Must be just what I am seeing there but I know you can swap restoration for almost anything else.

I can agree with a load of traits being useless though.

Tragic Positive.9356:

And Ranger has no immunity to conditions (has plenty of Cleanse if he traits for it, though… But if he traits for it, he has zero “Full cleanse” and can cleanse limited amount at a time only).

Signet of restoration is a full clense for you and your team.
On decent builds on a ranger you will lose 4 condis every 10s as long as your pet is alive and 1 every 10 if not. If there is anything you really need to remove you can use a survival skill.

Shanks.2907:

I think for starters Lightning Reflexes should also remove cripple and chilled. Most similar skills do that already like Withdraw, Roll for Initiative and Rocket Boots. I don’t think it would be overloading the skill by bringing it up to similar standards. They had the chance once when they added an immobilize break but stopped short.

The reason it doesn’t is because of survival of the fittest. If the skill removed movement impairing conditions as well the skill as a whole would remove a potential total of 5 conditions from you (6 if it breaks fear) . 3(4) are the start of the skill and 2 at the end.

We already have ample condi removal.

I toyed with a build using axe as the main weapon of both sets and the might upkeep was pretty huge. around 15 to 20 stacks.

Just lacked a way to apply enough condis on enemy to be worth it opposed to other builds.

Terrorsquad.2349:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

I have a few questions for everyone about this topic:

1. Are there any builds in particular that you are worried about besides Slick Shoes and Diversion?
2. According to This video, stability will be stacking in stacks, rather than duration. This potentially means that if you put up two stabilities that last 10s each, you’ll just have 2 stacks of 10s of stability. Builds like warriors running Balanced Stance and Last Stand would possibly not get 20s of stability if gained at the same time. Do you like this system better?
3. Overall, do you think any potential positives outweigh the potential negatives?

1. Hammer on Warrior, Spirit Guard (knockdown and push back from Spirits every few seconds), Terrormancer, p/s Engineer, Staff Ele, Mace/shield warrior, d/d ele air 3,…. Can go on really
2. I do not like that system because simply it’s a huge nerf to builds/skills needed in this meta, let me show:

- This way of Stability: immune to any CC for 8seconds with cd of 40s
- New way of Stability: immune to any CC ONCE for 8 seconds with cd of 40s

Do you see the very big problem? It’s a really huge nerf and have no clue why they would make it so.

There are more CC’s in the game (and its meta) than actual stability sources..
Instead of nerfing stability like this, they should give MORE stability sources to every class
3. Yes, WvW might be more organized now and PvE a little harder

Here i thought the new stability stacked in intensity like the following for example :
- This way of Stability: Gain stability for 8s
- New way of Stability: Gain 8 Stacks of stability for 8s.

Not really a nerf per say.

wauwi.9162:

With the emphasis on might stacking on the pet on your build, why exactly did you choose an axe over the 1Hsword for the mainhand?

Because the range or the bounce?

What’s the 2nd weapon set look like?

Because of Fortifying Bond . The way it works is when you gain a boonnyour pet will spawn the boon on itself with the duration stated by the trait. So even if you gain 1s of might your pet will still gain 13s of might on itself. SO where as you gain 3 stacks of might for 4s your pet gains 3 stacks of might for 13s.
Using this method its very easy to get and maintain 25 stacks of might on your pet.

Klonko.8341:

MoC overrated imho… I would swap it for protection on dodge. Its a huge defense increase, especially with a vigor focus while choosing the traits.

0/5/3/6/0 > 0/6/2/6/0

that 3 points is a must in EVERY ranger build.

Tried it and wasnt a huge fan. Can really feel the loss of MoC and i have no way of making use of that condition damage at all in the power build. Each to their own though.

Nimrud.5642:

Sigmoid.7082:

Sube Dai.8496:

Sword/dagger has 3 evades making it a lot stronger on point than GS. The only thing it lacks is burst but the ‘sticking’ aspect of sword auto means you that once you start hitting an enemy with it, you keep hitting them.

That provides good pressure and often ppl can’t handle it.

S/d is much, much stronger than GS IMO.

GS if you time it well enough you can get 2s of evade from the auto attack which is pretty huge.

Also sword cant hydro-leech -> maul for around 6~10k total damage which can sometimes be very decisive.

I do realize that GS gives more burst potential. What I tried to find out was if there was a fair trade-off for some more survivability. I by no means am trying to find a higher damage weapon set instead of GS.

So all in all I’ve ‘come up’ with this build. The wilderness survival traitline looked good to me for the first sight, but I had to realize how wrong I was as Nature Magic works much better with Marksmanship. So my only question that remains is whether a more defensive weapon set would do the trick? Will the Sw/Axe secondary weapon set kitten my damage into oblivion so that I become unable to fulfill my role as a zerker? To me it does not seem that bad, but I may be wrong. And lets not forget about the surprise effect as everyone will expect me to have GS if they see my longbow…

In my experience GS also has good survivability for what it does. enough evades on it along with the long block and swoop to enguage or disengage. May be personal preferance but i feel its plenty survivable and offers more utility at the same time. Sw/Axe could fill the role though i believe. I will give it a go tonight and edit this post.

This here is the build i use time to time when im not messing around and it works incredibly well. WIth the GS see the thing is you have a potential of 2 interupts fo MoC for a better maul as well as the GS #5 for interupting stomps and reses and such. Also nice low cooldown on bow skills so you can also put out nice ranged pressure as well.

DanSH.6143:

I heard it’s a top skill build that doesn’t carry you with passive effects, unlike power ranger.

What does this mean exactly.

Sube Dai.8496:

Sword/dagger has 3 evades making it a lot stronger on point than GS. The only thing it lacks is burst but the ‘sticking’ aspect of sword auto means you that once you start hitting an enemy with it, you keep hitting them.

That provides good pressure and often ppl can’t handle it.

S/d is much, much stronger than GS IMO.

GS if you time it well enough you can get 2s of evade from the auto attack which is pretty huge.

Also sword cant hydro-leech → maul for around 6~10k total damage which can sometimes be very decisive.

I use something like this currently and its not too bad at all. Best thing is the pert actually does a large amount of damage due to signet of the beast master since activating a signet counts as the effect proccing on the pet as well so when you use a signet your pet gains 6 stacks of might.

SPider will regularly hit between 1 and 2k per auto which is great.

Made long post but didn’t take. OP..other players will be here to explain why you are wrong and its a l2p issue.
Also take it you didn’t play lb before or ranger so you have no idea how weak most power specs were and the only real competitive build was condi.