well tested out troll and carrion troll is a no go in vs more then one person would work a lot better if settlers amulet was still around or if i was a long range fighter. when it comes to carrion ammy it makes my plus 20% crit chance from tiger useless and it seems toughness out performs vit in melee combat
Yea, toughness is definitely better for melee small-scale skirmishes. Since it’s not my play-style I don’t know which works best, neither which you’d prefer.
… Well, I still think that with base power only, any crit you have is useless. I mean, having 900 of the stat just to proc a sigil is a mathematical waste. Whether you crit for 200 or 300 damage, in PvP nobody cares.
Have you tried going with SotP? It might boost you up with that easy might and stability, that could scale with your precision and hybrid weapons.
Since you are going for 2 traps, your fights are more or less about pressure.
Now that I think about it, I liked Wanderer a bit more – have you tried that one out? Also, why not WHaO instead of the glyph if TU doesn’t work? It heals for more, offers better utility … It’s true it doesn’t heal in AoE (6% less CAF bar) but if you are not going for Verdant Etching trait – Glyph looks like a very poor choice.
I usually shun 2 or more offensive traps in a build. They might work, so I won’t get skeptical around them… But I’ll just list what the build lacks:
-Reliable counter to CCs. You have neither Stability nor enough stun-breakers.
-Reliable counter to Conditions (you can count lack of vitality in that, too). There’s a lot of them flying around. You have no way to defend apart from CAF on a decent cooldown. If you press it at a wrong time – it’s game over.
Apart from that, just a few ideas:
-have you tried the set with different stats? You are currently wasting 900 stats of precision (without Skirmishing). I think Carrion might be a viable substitution (axe is hybrid and sword might be played as hybrid after all).
-Why would you prefer untraited Glyph of Rejuvenation over Troll Unguent (or WHaO)? It has a long CD, and Troll Unguent not only heals for more but it has a bit better synergy with Bark Skin and has a massive synergy with Druid (every tick procs all minors – which means every tick procs that extra little healing as well as healing boost) – and it fills 50% of your CAF alone.
For Druid you are forced to roll either:
BM
Traited Healing Spring
Staff
And it is actually very limiting. Not even Signet of the Wild helps much. And you are prohibited to use it’s active if you want to ever see your Astral Form again.
At least 1 of all the proposed changes needs to happen. This one is just as good as any.
I think you have some creative ideas, but elites that are unique would work better.
I do agree with you on some points but I do find a transformation that you can’t control unique.
It doesn’t necessarily have to have to be called night/day. You can call it blossom and vegetation phases, change descriptions and art and you have a nature themed cycle.
While players want reliability in what they do – they don’t necessarily search for it in everything. I mean, if only the utilities and focus skills (or traits) are affected, you could still have your other weapons’ abilities on demand (CC, evades and such) just like Signet of Stone or Lightning Reflexes.
If you keep the use similar – for example you need both types of the same ability in the same situation but the way of execution is different (let’s say channeled heal vs stealth+regen has the same use but in a different way) – then it’s not the matter of reliability. Both are reliable but in a different way.
But yes, some ideas would definitely have to go through balance and enjoyment checks.
It’s intended. The revealed is mainly there for trait synergy and to prevent some too strong interactions if you cycle to night mid cast. It also adds some counterplay to a huge heal, i.e. You can’t stealth yourself to cast it.
I mean … Doesn’t it propose to reveal at the end ?
Which means it’s perfectly possible to cast it in stealth?
Day:
(4) Solar Flare (40 s cd, 5 s cast): Pulse blind to enemies and might (3) to allies as long as you remain still.
Solar Eclipse (50 s cd, 2.5 s cast): Channel the sun to restore 50% of your total health, then apply blind and revealed to yourself.
Night:
I believe the highlighted was a mistake. If not – I believe that’s a very bad idea. Getting revealed and blinded for casting our own spell on such a long cooldown doesn’t feel right.
I like the overall idea and mechanics. They sound unique and I do like the “uncontrollable” transformation.
If you get the chance, definitely take Bristleback instead of Jungle Stalker (if you are not in a group or your group has a Revenant / PS warrior).
With Rampager armor – you should be critting extremely often – providing a lot of might for your pet via Companion’s Might. Then you can just WHaO to get the might to yourself (plus you do use axe from time to time) – so I think Jungle Stalker’s Might might provide a DPS loss (It’s a 3 sec cast time after all).
Bristleback has a multi-hitting F2, and you probably already know what that means in combination with Sharpened Edges.
Also, I’m not yet sure, but depending on which weapon you use more – you might consider Zephyr’s Speed instead of Honed Axes. Shortbow scales well with quickness.
Axe is amazing for AoE – and the Honed trait helps even more so. But since I don’t know your play-style – you might as well try it out and decide for yourself.
The build looks fine, so don’t expect any magic happening from changing a trait or two.
Actually to get the electric wyvern, you only need the meta on the middle path to capture the WP closest to the wyvern nest. I managed to luck into DS where there was 30 sec left until it restarted. I walked out the portal to TD, waited a few seconds & walked back into DS. I got into an instance that rapidly filled up & ran the full meta. I stopped long enough on the middle path to collect the wyvern & went back to helping along the meta.
If you are against Condi Heavy-classes – wait till you get condi bombed. Use the maximum out of Druidic Clarity (full cleanse).
Especially against Condi Mesmers … Sometimes not doing anything at all is the key. Don’t touch auto-attacks with 12 confusion.
If your enemies happen to pressure you a lot – try to disengage with Staff / Celestial Shadow. There’s a difference between loosing and going into an unwinnable fight. Sometimes leaving the point is your only option.
Against Thieves… Well… They will burst you down – so land a CC on them. If you do – you technically won. They’ll either rotate or keep wasting their time.
What i don’t understand: Why would you focus that much on (wasted) bleed duration with full viper when you can get to + 100% duration for all condis with nightmare/trapper runes and malice sigil and take geomancy sigil for even more aoe condi application? Krait rune + agony sigil make more sense with sinister, rampager or rabid gear.
And i would rather use fire and poison trap instead of spike trap and sharpening stone.
Btw, i made ascended viper’s weapons + armor just for soloing stuff (including dunkeons/fractals) and open world PvE – why not :P
That’s because I haven’t checked that before – which is my fault.
The poison and fire traps are just as good as spike trap. I just preferred the synergy with Ancient Seeds.
I’ll go correct it, thanks.
It’s still a huge waste of resources. Thousandfold more so with crafting an ascended rampager set.
Lmao.
You realize the most efficient way to create viper ascended is by making something other than viper ascended and converting it right? Ya know like maybe Rampagers.
You can get the best DPS set of ascendeds (viper) with only a little more with results being literally the same.
You are not really helping the OP with anything, I’m afraid. He already has your suggestion and my opinion why should he not.
Why would you get so deep in the topic? I know what you mean. But I’m not sure if you get an idea of my point.
It’s still a huge waste of resources. Thousandfold more so with crafting an ascended rampager set. That build is not really usable anywhere apart from open world.
By having an ascended Viper set you are good to go to any an every content. Plus it’s just as effective. The differences in open world are minimal.
Plus OP asked for maximizing healing as well. Which means traiting for druid (you left that out).
Builds listed are literally templates. If the OP wants to change anything or leave out X or Y he will do so. I’m just pointing out logical solutions. There’s no point in crafting an ascended set and waste 400 gold for an open world content that you’ll have to replace for everything else, <sigh>… You can get the best DPS set of ascendeds (viper) with only a little more with results being literally the same.
You won’t notice a dmg difference in exploring areas. But with the Bleeder druid by kazi – you have Natural Stride (an extreme time efficiency while roaming in Tyria), that amazing bleed bomb (trap+seeds > torch) and you are fine to join any Raid, Dungeon or Fractal without hesitation. People are going to kick you on spot if you call yourself a rampager Ranger in difficult content or speed runs.
Here is something more realistic if you don’t already have the gear/means to get it and it will scale decently from queensdale to orr.
Keep in mind that when downscaled, your stat points get wrecked pretty badly but hard stats like fury, accuracy sigil, Hunter’s tactics (+10% crit chance) +% condi duration and so on are not.
You do realize this build deals only around 50% of the condi damage than the one proposed, don’t you ?
The 35% crit might not be worth it. Not to mention that Rampager is not really accepted anywhere and can be used in open world only, whereas the Viper Setup is perfectly viable for any and every content. Including raids.
I wouldn’t really suggest making a build and whole equipment that specializes around down-scaled areas. No one cares about those. People do them naked with the same results. It’s a waste of resources.
Sharpened edges and earth sigil type build is weaker in open world exploring cause of poor crit chance.
Well, naturally.
But it’s still one of the better choices since you do not rely on immobile targets and melee range (easier tagging and switching, you get a lot of boosts for World Bosses, too).
There aren’t really any other choices for Condi DPS anyway. It’s not like the DPS magically changes by 280% with a single change of the sigil. It’s open world, after all.
It’s pretty fine to go into raids, but as Fluffball already said – let the party know you are still new to the content.
Your armor can be celestial, I see no real problem with that, however, you should not let your toughness value go past the one of the Squad’s tank. So in case they go for lower-toughness guy, you might want to have some no-toughness armor just in case (like Magi, those are cheap and do the job, you are not there for personal DPS anyway)
(EDIT: about WIND – I did realize this myself, but it still does the job of intel-sharing)
So I just tried a cheap version of the condi build, and its really fun in open world. Really high bleed hits, I was getting up to 30 stacks on my own with my pet
If you get time it right, you might be able to get to 65.
I’ve been reading more just now on Reddit – what you said about power creep makes a lot of sense. So dungeons are easy and quick now, but do you still think condi viper is < power zerker builds on longer boss fights? I was reading that min maxers care more about average sustained dps than burst dps – do you think zerker still takes the cake on highest sustained (average) dps?
We had a guildie from the ranger guild make a few tests of DPS and his data compared A/T, SB build to go somewhere near 21K and Zerker could go to around 18K fully buffed (if I recall correctly; I assume it’s fine to use this data as a starting point since you wanted the min/max solution which relies on other classes’ might, fury and quickness stacks).
He also said that Zerker started at roughly 3K DPS more than condi sustained and then dropped back down, the Condi started 2K less than zerk sustained and then ramped up.
If you really do want to go for min/maxing – you’d have to check every single boss’s toughness values, evaluate Party DPS to decide how long will the kill take to determine whether Condi DPS does ramp up in time to beat berserker … It cannot be done if you want to keep your sanity. I did try for a similar thing in the past.
Overall conclusion I had is that Berserker is much better for Dungeons and conditions are without a doubt better for fractals (fractals enemies scale on toughness and HP). For raids – it depends individually on each boss and your composition.
In dungeons – not only you can afford to go for 4 glyphs (GotL), you can also pull a distant mob into melee range for cleave damage, your pet gets some bonus might and you apply bonus vulnerability unlike condi builds (I haven’t checked most dungeons but some might still have objects immune to condi damage). There’s also much more CC for break-bar that you offer in Zerk.
I’m sorry but … You are 1 year late with this topic.
… And not really right, either.
Druid’s are offensive buffers / disruptors / healers which means supports of any kind you might want to ask for. If you stopped your train of thought where meta began – then you did something like taking a kiwi fruit to your hand and claiming it’s brown because you haven’t tried looking inside of it to see it’s green as well.
Assuming our highest DPS set uses hybrid weapons – it’s not that bad of an option.
Axe/torch + shortbow? Is SB back to being a thing in dungeon running since the buffs?
I don’t know.
All I know are results that proved SB to be the superior option for DPS to most real-time occasions if we are talking about single target. Surpassing even A/T (you are on the move 90% of the time in higher fractals).
The bleed build is a thing.
A lot of people are not familiar with it (so get prepared for fire from pugs) but yup – it’s like one of the better you can find. Dungeons still work on Zerks, but fractals and raids are where it rocks.
Dolyak (Greenz)
Mad King (Birds)
Pirate / Rock Dog (Zoo)
You also might be able to spawn the mist wolf yourself with Rune of the Pack (+WH +Clarion Bond) – not tested, just an idea crossing my mind.
Care to enlighten me with regards to Pirate / Rock Dog (Zoo). Seriously no idea what you mean. Then again, I only WvW…
Sun Spirit, 2 Hyenas, Rune-spawned.
You can proc the Sun Spirit 4 times yourself. It’s pretty fun seeing people having no idea where did the 18 stacks of burn come from.
Dolyak (Greenz)
Mad King (Birds)
Pirate / Rock Dog (Zoo)
You also might be able to spawn the mist wolf yourself with Rune of the Pack (+WH +Clarion Bond) – not tested, just an idea crossing my mind.
Looks decent to me.
Since you play conditions – you need only 1 stat for DPS. Investing the rest into defenses is not really that bad of an idea.
Condition DPS scales both on the condi damage & condi duration stats.
Also a lot of condition builds rely on some amount of crit to proc either sigils or traits, such as sharpened edges in the linked build.
Well, naturally.
But even if I get hated for this one – going for defensive stats and condition damage is the solution.
I’ve wiped more often than not because people have no idea how to dodge or how to build. Playing Trailblazer (and alike) is a solution.
The more time you spend in downed mode – the less damage you deal. And I’m not sure if I’m the only one to realize but I feel like people spend more time in downed mode rather than fighting in lvl 90+ fractals.
Unless OP is looking for a hardcore PvE guild where everyone knows every pixel and animation and only looks for ways to reduce time spent – OP’s objective should be to beat the content smoothly. High lvl fractals are not the environment where full DPS works anymore.
He asked if his build works – and it works better than any berserker build. It also works better than any glass cannon in pug groups. A few details can be improved here and there – but his idea is not that far from being useful.
I remember times where everyone said “no one needs healers for fractals”.
Once I built full cleric it reduced my time spent in fractals by almost one half.
Since Druids do not deal that much damage regardless of their build – I either utilize around boosting my party’s DPS to maximum or make sure they take no hits (the perma-CC build). And this build proposed is not that wrong unless he joins a group that literally asks for Meta. Can it be further improved? Sure. By getting trailblazers for starters (which takes a lot of grinding time) and improving the sigil mentioned. But the context is not far from being good.
Looks decent to me.
Since you play conditions – you need only 1 stat for DPS. Investing the rest into defenses is not really that bad of an idea.
The build is technically weak everywhere else – but that was not your question I guess. For T4 fractals this should do. As a druid – your personal DPS never really mattered that much.
But you should definitely take Druid, Grace of the Land and Frost Spotter. That’s why groups want you.
Groups accept rangers to.
I accept even full signet necros, but that doesn’t mean I want them.
The boosts I mentioned are the reason why we became meta. You can literally solo any content. If we are talking about usefulness – Ranger will not be as useful as druid. Period.
For raids – go healer (Zealot / Magi / Cleric – literally any of those) and don’t get more toughness than your tank. You are not there for DPS.
Unless you are with a premade group – they will tell you what they need.
For other content – both Berserker and Viper are fine. Viper peaks at longer skirmishes (fractals), Berserker at swift zerging (dungeons).
That’s literally your choice.
But you should definitely take Druid, Grace of the Land and Frost Spotter. That’s why groups want you.
That’s exactly I no longer use it. It’s very good at everything, but not the best at anything. I prefer to use 2 specialized pets that are better at what they do. That way when I swap to a pet, I’m getting the most out of the reason I swapped to that pet.
Well, that naturally makes sense. I just cannot stop counting how many times have the smoke field saved my life.
But that’s my personal play-style.
Smokescale is in the highest tier along with bristleback, wolf, drake, spider, and arguably raven. You can’t directly compare those pets because they do different things.
I was mostly speaking overall.
SmokeScale has durability, has spike that tracks the target, has CC and is the only pet that has synergy with Ranger and druid in general. It also negates a portion of Empathic Bond and negates whole Signet of Renewal.
It also offers stealth.
All this combined will outblast any other pet for PvP. If only for the stealth combo. Bristle will not outperform this pet just because it a spike that misses anywhere outside of 600 range and has 4 seconds cast time.
I was able to replace bristle in my builds. I wasn’t able to replace smokescale, though. It’s just way too versatile and good at everything. It’s also a walking portable insta-taunt.
SmokeScale is the best PvP pet you can get. People like it for open world as well. I strongly recommend not to use it in dungeons/fractals/raids.
The highest DPS pet would be Lynx/Tiger depending on target toughness.
The highest DPS on moving target has Bristleback hands down.
Staff 4 should be what axe 4 once was just shoot out to your target. Since there is no return and shooter range, Staff 4 shouldn’t suffer the issues axe had.
Can’t agree. It’s mechanics affect friendly targets as well.
It needs to stay ground targeted if you don’t want to utterly destroy the friendly support cleansing part of the skill.
Back to PoS:
~Every boomerang effect suffers from these downsides. You want to remove them from the game entirely? Because it can miss?
Nope, that’s a no from me. I want some diversity in what I do. And it’s not really hard to land anymore. You can even prevent it from fails on terrain. You couldn’t do that before – now you can.
Now all I hear and see are mostly skill-cap or L2P issues. Don’t take it as an offense, it’s not meant that way by any chance – it’s just that all of possible “fails” on PoS has been brought close to zero now. There’s not a single situation where I could tell to myself: “God, this ability is busted.”
Now all I can say to it is: “kitten I missed.”
The overwhelming majority of your damage is from burns and some from bleeds, not from the piddly damage axe does to a single target.
Axe auto could do 0 damage and would probably have a negligible effect (assuming one isn’t a neurotic minmaxer) on your total dps in a fight against a raid or dungeon/fractal boss.
You still have the option.
And also – outside of raid content you do use axe #1 if you can. It can increase your might stacks up to 25. It can also deal damage to targets immune to conditions.
A condi build can’t do that.
Naturally – the most DPS that you can squeeze goes out of conditions but that changes nothing about hybrid DPS and uses of axe.
You are right. 90% of it’s damage goes from conditions. Which means……. Why no one uses Wanderer / Dire / Rabid / whichever condi (only) stats ? Probably because even the power portion matters. Which naturally promotes and proves the idea it being hybrid.
Why can’t people just play what they like and be happy that the raid boss dies?
Because it’s the same everywhere in the world.
Companies hire people of highest value – those who bring most to their cause.
It’s about offer and demand.
If 9 employees are trying their best to not only get the job done, but get it done the fastest/the most comfortable/the easiest way and 1 person slacks doing negative damage wasting 9 people’s time – that’s what people call rude or inadequate.
Therefore – information, being informed and prepared is one of the highest value.
You know – not everyone likes being dragged down by others. It’s a topic repeated over and over again. While it’s arrogant to ask for “ZerkMeta XY”, it’s also arrogant not to bring it to a group where everyone else took their trouble to maximize their role output. If others can be useful – so can everyone else.
Saying we don’t need DPS tester is just like saying we don’t need evening news because you’ll be able to survive till next day without them. It’s about being informed.
I’m actually fairly satisfied with it’s current functionality. The velocity is much better than it used to be and I can predict it’s target area now.
I find Staff #4 much more troublesome than PoS.
Other classes with boomerang projectile has the same problem so I think there is no need for further improvement.
Golden Ranger rule:
“Don’t ask for changes of something that isn’t broken. Otherwise you will get it broken”
Staff AA better than LB AA, and also very underrated. Try Staff AA with Marauder amulet and proc sigils and be amazed.
We’ve always been kings of Sigil Procs.
Because they have been a meaningful portion of our damage output thanks to multi-hitting. Could you guess what that might mean?
If sigils on our class are a noticeable form of damage – the base damage without them must be very low.
Which indeed is the case. And there’s nothing wrong about it. We have pets to compensate and if they get the needed attention – weapons wouldn’t have to be the problem.
While I know you are mostly true, I’m positive that pets having quickness would result in much less “missed” attacks (target won’t be able to get out of range in time), while having beast mastery traitline would reduce pets’ reposition time.
It would solve a lot of our problems in PvE.
I know that baseline pets are horrifyingly bad. But we need only 2 for the competitive and 2 are absolutely enough. Rework of all core pets is going to take a long time and still wouldn’t solve the DPS portion of the problem.
Just like Wuselknusel’s, there’s been some amazing suggestions for improving our problems. ANet just needs to assemble their coders and get classes working. Not just Rangers even if Rangers are in the most dire need of it.
By that logic, if I was in full berserker running axe/torch it would be a hybrid build. It’s just a technicality that a/t uses hybrid armor and ekes some power damage out.
I’m not sure why we’re debating this though, I have no idea what’s going on.
That would be a dead build. Or a wrong one. That’s a build with low damage output so there’s no reason to classify it regardless of stats or type of damage output (since it has damage lower than other possible options).
Aaaand I came late to this thread.
So I stated that I disagree with OP. Sorry if that caused a misunderstanding.
I think we’re stretching it a bit to call the a/t build a hybrid build. I just looked at the metabattle suggested skill usage and the autoattack is only used once per rotation. If there were an armor set that was 100% condition damage instead of half and half like vipers (i.e. shove all the power of vipers into condi) that would be the recommended gear.
For PvE, axe goes in there because it does better condi damage than any alternatives. For PvP and WvW, hell ya axe as hybrid is fantastic.
That doesn’t change anything, though.
Axe is a hybrid weapon used for Hybrid Stats itemization. Even for PvE.
Wanderer / Rabid would be the condi stats if you ask me. Yet A/T rangers don’t go Wanderer for PvE even if DPS difference is low.
Just because our rotation squeezes most of condition part of the hybrid stats – it doesn’t mean the stats are condi. A single build of a single class doesn’t make the nature of one stat combination different. The point stays.
agreed. the bond should also flow both ways, if the pet gets a buff it should be able to share it to the ranger as well. pets also need a flat increase to stats.
I don’t agree on “both way” sharing. One way sharing is what we need to keep it fair with other classes. They don’t get buffed on 1200 range, we shouldn’t be either.
Our pet should be our damage output. So it should scale of our buffs. There’s no logical reason why it shouldn’t. It shouldn’t be treated as 6th target in terms of being a subject for boons/buffs.
As a pet-class our pet should get treated as part of our character. Not as a random friendly AI. We were designed to be the pet class after all.
I believe most of people are missing the main point.
Ranger’s pets in raids are not a subject for Frost Spirit, Might, Fury, and most importantly QUICKNESS.
And in case we trait into BM for personal quickness – we strip our pets of boons which makes NM mandatory – that is ridiculous since it means sacrificing one of our 2 main DPS traitlines.
Pet copying all buffs from the Ranger (auras, stealth, boons, traits and food included) has to get implemented. It has been the anchor ever since day 1 and a lot of us has brought this up over and over again.
Fortifying Bond needs to get a different functionality and we need buffed pet baseline. Full Stop.
If pets gained traits (+10% Steady Focus, 10% crit SK Minor, Spotter, Might and Ferocity Auras) and Quickness – our DPS would improve just to get on par with other classes.
Quickness helps hit moving targets a lot, and Beast Mastery would give pets that bonus mobility to stick to targets with much more ease.
I constantly fall down from laughter when people suggest Hybrid weapon sucks … for content where Hybrid builds are Ranger’s strongest domain.
Viper’s, Sinister’s – those are both hybrid stats. Not Condi.
So … I’m sorry but I’m not gonna agree on any of OP’s believes.
Axe is currently used in our highest DPS build. It has been used even before the buffs as well.
