Guild Wars 2

Here’s another Evolved Destroyer video, this time featuring 8.7k sword autos

Build is 30/25/0/15/0 Berserker/Scholar with night/force sigils
100prec/10% crit damage food, destroyer slaying potion, 25 bloodlust stacks
92% crit chance, strength booster. 15-25 vuln.

For reference here’s the same fight with GS instead

On a side note: on both videos i forget to swap the pet in for a few seconds lol. Anet fix pathing issues pls.

Star Ace.5207:

In short, your comment should read “Sword/xx is the optimal PvE melee option for Rangers”.

FTFY

Anything is viable, I could clear every PvE content in the game with 0/0/0/0/0 clerics Axe/Dagger if I really wanted to. In terms of speed running, Sword/MH is the only viable option since you’re better off taking any other class over a GS/LB/Axe/whatever ranger.

30/30/0/x/x 100% condi duration zerker grenades imo.

Your standards may be a bit too high. If i put “Zerker only” instead of “Zerker/Scholar”, i’ll usually take anyone that is “mostly” exotic zerker geared, even if they have “interesting” runes like fighter or dolyak. Finding zerker/scholar people with meta builds, 2 food buffs and separate stacking weapons are very rare in LFG. Sometimes, it’s also not worth the effort if you spend more time finding people than it takes to complete the dungeon (ie. if you’re only doing CoF p1 and nothing else)

Your experience is perfectly normal, as it takes multiple tries to get zerker people to join.

So, I was really bored and tested out GS for a bit in CoE.

2 things before I link the videos:
-The test is heavily biased towards the GS build, and were not under the same conditions
-My laptop has FPS issues while fraps-ing so it’s not smooth.

Unrealistic GS numbers
Realistic sword numbers

The goal with GS was to get unusually high (but not maximum possible) maul crits with a sustained damage build.

Greatsword:
20/25/0/25/0 Full ascended berserker with scholar runes, force sigil and 2H mastery
Sweet and Spicy Butternut Squash Soup (100 power, 10% crit damage)
Destroyer Slaying Potion
25 stacks of perception (Fully buffed crit chance = 100% or 99% couldn’t remember)
25 stacks of might
Strength Booster (gemstore item)
Frost Spirit
Both Warrior Banners
100% uptime of Steady Focus, Flanking and Scholar modifiers
Average of 15 stacks of vuln.

To increase this damage further, I would need a Night Sigil, bloodlust instead of perception, untraited Frost Spirit and traited Signet of the Wild. My group would also need to sustain 25 stacks of vuln for the two mauls in the fight. You could prolly get it over 20k if you tried hard, but 9-11k Mauls are more realistic, with the ocassionally 2333 hit when you don’t crit. I’m also ignoring single hit modifiers, as they are not useful for sustained DPS, otherwise I would have done 30/25/0/15/0 for the biggest hit possible. Instead, I was aiming for Sustained DPS.

In a 14s fight, there is only room for 2 Mauls. The first one hit for 14 187, the second one hit for 14 364 (It wasn’t captured on video, because slow laptop). I also believe that GS builds needs to stack crit chance all the way up to 100% because of the random nature of Maul.

Sword:
30/25/0/15/0 Full ascended Berserker with scholar runes, force sigil and night sigil
Dragon’s Breath Bun (no 200 power bonus)
Maintenance Oil
22 stacks of might
0 bloodlust or perception stacks
Signet of the Wild
No scholar bonus
~33% uptime of Steady Focus
100% uptime of Flanking Bonus
No destroyer slaying sigil/potion
25 stacks of vuln

So basically, I played that fight pretty poorly and was using cheap food. I was also not using a gem store booster, but that is a very unrealistic modifier to have in dungeons. Very few people are also going to carry a destroyer slaying potion, which works on 2 bosses in the game.

Kilger.5490:

Snip

Oh, yeah I know that. Earlier you said:

I’ve brought this up in other threads too. If you include pets dps the difference in damage gets closer to negligible.

The way you phrased that implies you were saying that the difference between GS and Sword is negligible if you include pet DPS since you were responding to a question that asked if the gap included pet damage. Then you say a small amount of pet might makes a very small difference that is basically negligible, hence the confusion. Also, assuming this is for PvE, I am ignoring any single hit modifiers as they are not useful for long term DPS and more of a PvP thing.

Clumsy.6257:

Just for the sake of coordinated groups, how do they compare if might is irrelevant? In my usual groups we maintain constant 25 might stacks and between 15-25 vuln. We also have permanent fury. So, since sword’s might stacking is useless in this scenario, would GS be better overall sheerly for the vulnerability stacking from maul?

Are you talking about might on the ranger or pet?

If ranger, you still want to use sword as it’s higher DPS. If sword is ~12% better with 0 might, then it’ll still be 12% better with 25 might. Solandri is ignoring the effects of Unshakeable in his analysis, which I feel is a very important factor so you won’t even maintain 5 vuln with 100% uptime on bosses. It might be okay if you use 20/25/0/25, but I haven’t ran the numbers on that or including Path of Scars into the rotation.

Solandri.9640:

Martial Mastery just lends itself to an exact damage calculation. The damage increase from 2H training depends on your crit chance % and crit damage %. That’s the only reason I was thorough with MM but not 2HT.

Two hand training increases the GS figures by 5% + an unknown amount due to the fury (exact amount depends on your crit chance %).

Since we’re just comparing weapons, couldn’t you just go with the target dummy/structure scenario (no crits) or ideal scenario (permanent fury). Sword has access to fury too, with better uptime so it’s not really an advantage. My reasoning is is similar to the Sigil of Force example I mentioned earlier.“Well, if I put a force sigil on GS but not sword it’ll start to close the gap between them.” It seems like it’d be unnecessary to calculate the DPS increase due to 30% uptime of fury.

Seras.5702:

So it’s consistent damage vs higher risk/reward burst

Skills like Rapid Fire are going to deal a more predictable amount of damage than Maul, but Maul has more potential with since it’s a harder hitting attack. Each portion of Rapid Fire has a chance to crit, ramping up the overall damage done. But with so many hits, it becomes consistent. Maul however, will either crit or it won’t, giving you a hard hitting attack or a crushing attack.

The issue is more that Maul is going to be incredibly inconsistent in PUGS or unorganized groups where your crit chance is going to vary alot due to questionable fury uptime, bosses taking much longer than usual and warriors not running discipline banner. The other issue is that If I don’t have a persisting flames ele or multiple warriors, then the group needs my warhorn for perma fury.

Kilger.5490:

Clumsy.6257:

From the calculations above I keep seeing that sword is ~25% stronger than GS on single targets. Is that 25% including pet damage? If not the gap would be considerably smaller assuming that your running 2 felines.

I’ve brought this up in other threads too. If you include pets dps the difference in damage gets closer to negligible . I know from experience playing necro, rangers dont melee dps in the sense a necro can do with a dagger so it all seems a bit trivial to me which weapon you go with, looking at it strictly as dps.

I don’t understand your logic/reasoning/math. The sword does have a distinct advantage in terms of pet DPS, due to faster might stacking from Skirmishing V and pet might on the auto attack chain.

Solandri.9640:

snip

Interesting…

Hate to nitpick, but have you considered the scenarios where you do not benefit from the extra vulnerability (Target already has 25 vuln) or when the target has Unshakeable (half vuln duration, but don’t forget 20-30% condi duration from Marksmanship).

Optimal Conditions (25 Vuln):
1047.5( (0.689)(6) + (2.133)(.75) ) / 6.75 = 890DPS (88.5% of sword’s DPS) for single target
I’m assuming you can just scale this number by 3 to get the 3-target cleave DPS = 2670 DPS (112% of Swords DPS). So it appears the cleave DPS is noticeably better, even if you don’t need the vulnerability from Maul.

I do find your finding a bit hard to believe (Can’t argue with math though), or to at least translate into real play. I used to play GS exclusively and always felt it was very far behind sword. The main question is “How do I fit martial mastery, into a Meta Spotter/Frost Spirit build.” The answer I’ve found for that is you don’t, and you take 2H training instead.

And by far, the main issue with maul is that you need it to crit. Non-crit mauls feel much much more punishing than auto attack or channeled non crits since maul is on a 6s cd. You have 1 chance for your single maul hit to crit, while channeled attacks such as Rapid Fire and Hundred Blades don’t suffer from the same problem because you have like 10 chances to crit and each crit is worth a smaller amount. Unless it’s not really a problem and just something I’m imagining it as a problem.

And yeah, I like to switch to the GS for trash as well, after I hit 25 stacks of bloodlust.

Edit: Also just realized the other issue that makes the gap bigger outside of theory are sigils. Sw/Offhand gets an additional modifier that GS can’t get until the April patch.

Clumsy.6257:

So what I understand so far from this thread:
1. For single targets, sword has superior DPS.
2. Sword auto-attack #2 does not cleave.
3.(?) For cleaving GS has superior DPS.

From the calculations above I keep seeing that sword is ~25% stronger than GS on single targets. Is that 25% including pet damage? If not the gap would be considerably smaller assuming that your running 2 felines.

1 and 2 are true.

3 is situational. Under ideal conditions they’re about the same (IIRC GS was about 1.6% better on 3 targets, but that doesn’t factor in the might you’ll give to your pet). The two things that skew it in the favor of GS are 2H training and lack of 25 vulnerability on the 3 targets. Even with the advantage, you should not use the GS for trash because you should be double stacking bloodlust/perception with your Sword/offhand.

25% does not include the pet damage because your pets with either weapon will do roughly the same amount of damage, with the sword having a slight might advantage.

Emanuel.9781:

No.

WilliCalifornia.1837:

I have come to realize, after reader this thread. I see a heavily biased towards Sword, and not one mention about Vuln and stacking. Also, isn’t Greatsword have higher base stats than Sword? just saying.

People are biased towards sword because it does more damage.

My posts mention vuln and I have two of them in this thread.

Higher base damage doesn’t mean much when it takes longer to complete the auto attack chain and the negligible increase in base damage doesn’t make up for the extra time needed to complete the auto attack chain.

My asura warrior with t3 and scarlet gloves/shoulders

Chrispy.5641:

Snip

You’re focusing too much on the numbers I put, but the main point was that signets/crit don’t give GS an advantage over sword. I also said, outscales, which almost the same as DPS in this example.

You also can’t just add up the activation times. From 4 months ago in the same thread you posted:

The skill activation times don’t include after-cast and animation delays, so aren’t quite right for a DPS calculation.

And since you want reference numbers:
Solandri: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Sword-better-than-Greatsword-Explain/first#post3051627
Me: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Just-sort-it-I-am-confused/first#post3701782

Fluffball.8307:

I’ve been wondering for quite a while now, is there ever a point where GS can out damage sword in PvE dungeon running? Any hypothetical scenario or part comp?

The question stems from that screenshot someone posted of mauling a thief for like 50k.

3 target cleave with 2H training and 20 or Less Vulnerability stacks

Just scale Solandri’s equations to 9 and 7 “hits” if you want to see how I calculated that.
Edit: changed word “target” to “hits” to be slightly less confusing.

Chrispy.5641:

……
Sword’s Auttoatack is higher (about 20% higher infact), but the Greatsword’s damage is in its burst, (not just through Maul, but through its other burst skill : Counterattack), because once you start calculating things like critical damage, and damage bonuses from signets, Maul and Counterattack will start to deal greater and greater damage, and will eventually out damage the sword in those type of builds.

I’m going to call bullkitten on that. There is no way that is true, since Sword already outscales GS by a fair bit. (24.5% in my numbers). Critical Damage and Signets will also affect Sword the same way it affects GS.

That argument is like saying “Well, if I put a force sigil on GS but not sword it’ll start to close the gap between them”

Keep in mind, sword isn’t always the best choice for weapons. It’s main weakness is that it can’t max melee range, which is required for some strategies.

- You get kicked from a PUG immediately upon joining.

3 target cleave is about the same DPS between the two. If you don’t have 25 vuln on your targets then GS pulls ahead on 3 target cleave.

Spirits pulse their “boon” every 3s, which lasts for 6s. While the 6s boon is active, you have a chance to trigger their special effect. All spirits except for Frost Spirit and Spirit of Nature have an ICD of 10s. This means you can only get a 3s protection from Stone Spirit once every 10s, but you can get an average total DPS increase of 7% from Frost Spirit while it’s up. The 10% damage can proc on multiple hits in channelled attacks such as Hundred Blades.

Spirit of Nature is unusual, it gives a passive~380 heal every second to multiple party members within range. It’s basically like giving a warrior’s healing signet to your party for 60s

Beast Sos.1457:

Did I say those are the only ones?

Beast Sos.1457:

Something I would love to see is the use of combo fields in dungeons. People only use it to stack might but what about aoe heals, etc. It is rare to see someone use a water combo field in a dungeon.

There’s more to dungeons/fractals than stacking (although not much more), but that’s beyond the scope of this discussion and off topic.

I believe that people would run it if the mechanics were less irritating and less puzzle-y. I enjoy fights like Lupicus and Molten Duo but not fights like clockheart and Mai Trin. Like Nike said, It already does have the best rewards in the game. If only it was more like the other dungeon paths and didn’t replace an existing one.

Fire is not the only used combo field in dungeons.

Water, Smoke and Lightning are used fairly often, just maybe not in PUGs.

Whirls + light fields are also good for clearing conditions.

etc.

But its k b/c you can just stack on Lupicus and win amirite?

Solandri.9640:

Well, I was talking about regen in the context of dungeons/fractals. It’s one of the weaker defensive boons but I enjoy having it especially when the boss has retaliation. Protection, Aegis, Stability are much stronger boon wise, and reflects/blinds/weakness help more than regen obviously.

Idk, I still think swiftness is more of a “nice to have but not required boon” for combat. I think I rely more on cripple, chill and immobolize for kiting. I guess it does have value in fractal fights where you run in and out of melee range a lot, but there are a lot of fights where you just stack and don’t need to move (but still dodge).

You are probably right on the HPS part, but this assumes everyone has toughness. A lot of people go clerics with the mindset of healing zerkers and preventing them from faceplanting. The non-toughness party members will still take the same amount of damage. The clerics party member may survive 3.35x longer, but the zerkers may not and if they die, the clerics party members would have to survive even longer. So basically, healers and DPS don’t mix well. Thanks for taking the time to check out my math btw.

HPS with 700 HP
Sigil of water/Sigil of renewal: (370 + (0.1 * 700)) / 10 = 44 HPS
Sigil of Blood: (453 + 70) / 5= 52.3 HPS . (Wiki says ICD = 5s)
Sigil of Leeching = 97.5 HPS
Healing Spring Direct Heal: 5620 / 30.5 = 184.26 HPS
Regen: = 217.5 HPS
Rune of Water : 690 + (0.5 * 700) / 10 = 104 HPS

I believe these sigils all share an ICD so you could all have 1 active at any time

Total HPS (Water/Renewal) = 549.76 HPS
Blood: 559.06 HPS
Leeching: 603.36 HPS

Total HPS to Allies: (Water/Renewal) 365.5 HPS

EP
1500 power/precision
70% critical damage?

-25 might
-No food
-No disc banner or Frost Spirit
-Assuming 70% critical damage because you didn’t mention it
Modifiers:
-5% From Nature Magic 25

EP = 3800.

So it does about half as much DPS as you running the same trait set up with Berserker/Ranger Gear. HPS is about 2.3x better (water/renewal)

I don’t know how to model toughness and effective health unfortunately.

Oh, I just assumed 0 healing power. I feel severely gimping your damage for an extra ~90 regen is not worth the trade off. This game is designed so that damage scales much better than healing power or toughness. (ie. going from berserker to clerics is like -75% damage, to increase your regen from to 0.78% 1.3% of your health/sec. Rough estimates, I can spreadsheet the damage decrease later if you want) I think I’m done posting here, but just remember: when you trade damage stats for survivability, you also take a non-negligible amount of time longer to kill things which means taking more damage taken overall. This will also requiring more healing/defense. Less healing and more DPS can make fights shorter, similar to how trading a healer in WoW for more DPS makes some fight easier.

Condition damage builds are bad because of game mechanics. They are useless against structure fights such as the one you mentioned in CoF p2 and burrows in AC. It’s also mostly single target too. 1000 damage per tick isn’t that impressive when you can hit over 8k DPS on a ranger.

Edit: Here’s some comparisons I did for fun. Might have made a mistake but i’ll try to fix any I make:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/14qHjYQGHs2mxzxx2cuozv7nEhPrUHPhSL0YTI4V_C5I/pub
Comparison of full berserker meta vs. 20/20/0/30/0 full cleric. I don’t know your exact stats though, and would need a build link for your gear mix. Healing power still won’t outheal auto attacks from some of the harder content in this game.

Arran.9182:

TurtleDragon.3108:

Regeneration and Nature’s Voice are fairly weak in PvE. The pitiful ~130 hps is not going to help you face tank a 7k auto attack. It’s more of a “nice to have” thing than something that has a great impact on survivability. It’s largely a waste of trait points and redundant when you have healing spring already. It’s also fairly easy to get regen in a party composition from eles, engis or guardians. Swiftness doesn’t help with survivability either.

The maths doesnt add up, i know this, looking at the numbers i’d of never had chosen to put anything into healing power or regens, but when playing the difference is very noticable. and i prefer noticing this differnce to noticing myself doing massive damage. As long as on a fight like p2 cof end i dont hold people up on acolytes im happy. 130+ 0.125*HealingP is nothing. for regen. I think Healing Spring Heal is 1.0.. and when i look at this i think, “pointless, not worth it at all” but when im playing it, i just feel that i dont have to do everything perfect, using GS gives me that stun/daze which i otherwise have with sword/wh/axe, and also the built in evade. i might be mistaken but is shortbow now preferable? but id rather have path of scars than shortbow, i love that skill.

If you’re getting higher regen than 130 hps, it’s because someone is using cleric’s in your group, or you’re getting heals from other sources (ie. ele in water attunement).

Acolytes in CoF aren’t a good example, since they have a disproportionately low amount of health compared to elites (silvers). Anything can look good there. It’s like saying you’re good at killing critters so damage is a non issue.

Regeneration and Nature’s Voice are fairly weak in PvE. The pitiful ~130 hps is not going to help you face tank a 7k auto attack. It’s more of a “nice to have” thing than something that has a great impact on survivability. It’s largely a waste of trait points and redundant when you have healing spring already. It’s also fairly easy to get regen in a party composition from eles, engis or guardians. Swiftness doesn’t help with survivability either.

Thaddeus.4891:

I also use the 20/25/0/25/0.

20 in Marksmanship for Steady Focus and Spotter.
25 in Skirmishing for stats and Hunter’s tactics
25 in Nature Magic for Vigourous Spirits and Bountiful Hunter.

Two things that i still struggle to decide are
1) Strength of Spirit vs Spirit Unbound. Obviously Strength will give me more theorical DPS, but Spirit Unbound allow you to always have your spirit with you and don’t have to kill you spirit and recast them just before another fight. This way my spirit are ready before the fight and i can started attacking right away. Since i have Frost and Sun spirit with me that same me a lot of time and i can focus on the combat more. Also this make the Water Spirit seem less bad. I’m not sure yet, i’m only testing it right now, but it can heal quite a lot someone using FGS and i don’t have to waste time using a healing skill in the middle of the combat.
2) I never know what to use as my adept and master trait in the skirmish line. I usually go with trait I and II. But depending on our party we usually have plenty bleeding already, while the pets attack are not that great to begin with. Would be nice to have 2 good trait to take there and not only filler in order to gain the stats and 2 minor trait.

Water spirit has an ICD, so you were prolly looking at a thief heal himself with Signet of Malice and Fiery Rush. Water spirit is like ~87 hps. Only use i’ve found for it is fractal PUGS where everyone is spread out ranging a boss like arch diviner. Even then, I feel healing spring is better.

“I don’t like it, but I know it’s better for maximum damage” is also poor reasoning for skill and trait choices

Fluffball.8307:

Aren’t those record runs usually using FGSs on 4ish players and stacking damage boosts (i.e. FS and spotter)? At any rate, since only 5 people out of the over 4 million copies sold are ever going to be holding the record, I’m not sure how relevant this is. :P

I think in a record run environment, the dmg boost is a minor convenience at best since they’ll have enough dmg boosters from 25 might and both warrior banners. Rangers suffer from handicaps such as having a pet, and being unable to max melee range with sword. Rangers are also middle of the pack in terms of DPS, prolly on the lower side too.

I haven’t gone for any records yet, so I don’t exactly know why rangers are not brought to them.
http://gwscr.com/records/current-meta-dungeon-records

Fluffball.8307:

TurtleDragon.3108:

Rangers … are currently not used in record runs.

I am not part of any record runs, but it’s my understanding that most speed clear guilds take a ranger for spotter and FS. There is even a thread in the dungeon forum right now about the best DPS team available and almost everyone is answering with 1 ranger, and apparently people have done the math.

I do occasionally do some of those ultra fast runs (not trying for records, just having fun with like minded PUGs) and my ranger is always welcome. Typically it is something like 2 eles, a guard, a warrior, and me.

There’s a pretty big difference between a record run, and a “casual speed clear” run in dungeon guilds.

Record runs: You don’t do it for farm, gold or loot. You need to take the most optimal group composition available, use the best food, change your sigils etc. Stuff like 3:33 CM p3 and 5:51 hotw p1 are outliers. It’ll take more than 1 try too, you will be repeating the path multiple times within the same daily reset period.

Casual speed run: You do it for fun, gold and/or loot. You usually just take whatever class you feel like playing atm, but 1-2 people may swap to fix the group composition. ie. swap to a mesmer/guardian if you need reflects for example. You’re prolly not going to use 60s or 20s food, but using cheap food helps. Your end time will be inbetween the fastest runs possible and an average PUG runs. ( ie. 3-4 minutes for a record run group, 6-9 minutes in a dungeon guild, 10-12 minuets in a PUG for CM p3)

This will vary from guild to guild, but I doubt all their runs all the time are going to have record level clear times

Rangers are required for the max possible theoretical DPS, but highest possible DPS doesn’t necessarily mean the fastest time for a given path.

awge.3852:

TurtleDragon.3108:

Bambula.3649:

wtf even for record runs a ranger can be used.
no even in most frac you dont need a longbow

Rangers, necros, and engineers are currently not used in record runs. Even if you use one for an unclaimed record atm, another guild would beat it with a composition that doesn’t include one.

Most ranger players are going to need a longbow or ranged of some sort in fractals because the strategies in PUG environments or in disorganized, low dps groups are quite different for fractals. This is also even more problematic when you consider the lvl 49 instability, where you are sometimes just better off ranging if you can range without dodging where otherwise you’d dodge while meleeing.

I disagree that you must use a longbow, if you know how to play you can just stick to sword/axe or GS for that matter. A power build allows for signet use which can help a lot (signet of stone), you can gear for high critical damage rather than high precision, while maintaining 2000~3000 defense and not lose in power. Certain setups can also elevate melee play, for quickness rolling or max critical chance on a high critical damage setup, it all depends on how you approach it. Then again, not everyone is comfortable doing melee alone, I can see the need for ranged weapons depending on the speed run, but it really does come down to how well you know your dungeon and your play.

I did say PUG and disorganized environments only.

Mossman and archdiviner can be fairly annoying to melee without aegis/weakness spam.

Meleeing dredge mining suit/ice elemental can be detrimental to the group if you are the only one doing it and it locks onto you.

Molten Duo is easy to melee if your group “all in” it, but in a PUG berserker will start shadow stepping all over the place due to people ranging and spamming shockwave.

I haven’t quite figured out an effective ranger strat yet for grawl shaman yet. So no comment on this.

Unless I missed something, everything else should be easy to melee. But yea, Signet of Stone is amazing in fractals.

Arran.9182:

TurtleDragon.3108:

The reason i don’t take frost spirit, and i dont know how many times i’ve said this, because this im not aiming for maximum damage. i really dont care if the 70%chance to get 10% extra damage on a hit persists after its death. because i’m aiming for moderate damage, with high defence boon up time.

Honestly, you’re playing the wrong class for that. Rangers are great at buffing the group’s overall damage but mediocre at best at protecting the party. You’re trying to make the ranger into something it’s not. It’s like playing a support (defensive) heal warrior.

Not aiming for near maximum dps is pretty much the wrong way to play ranger in PvE.

ghostlight.6150:

I don’t think I’ll be running too many instances/dungeons (fractals?) as it’s a very small group of friends unless we can find groups that are willing to take pity and join in. In which case I want to be at least useful in my roll. I’ve been reading as many guides as I can to help me get an idea for what would be wanted from me but I won’t sell my fun just so I can grind for gear.

I will look into those links now, though, thank you for a way to spring board towards which direction I’d like to go.

Though just in your opinions, would putting Toughness on gear for a ranger be a waste?

Toughness can be quite good depending on your build in WvWvW. In open world PvE it can help you survive mass scale, zerg content such as the ones in living story. (ie. PTV gear is quite good for content like Tequatl). Individual gear and skill isn’t as important in most zerg content, maybe with wurm being the exception (I haven’t done Wurm)

In dungeons and fractals, I feel it’s a stat that becomes less useful the more you do them.

Zerker is just gear, it’s not a build by itself. You could go “zerker beastmaster” if you wanted to, but saying “zerker” doesn’t say much when talking about builds. It’s a more appropriate response to “What gear should I use” which the OP did ask.

Zerker being dominant in PvE is just a result of how the game was designed. The game is nice in that it has no gear requirements, and that you could complete any PvE content in any gear no matter how casual or hardcore you are (which may/maynot be a good thing depending on how you look at it. I do believe there should be some limit as to how successful you can be without being sufficiently skilled). Condition damage not being viable is ultimately a failure of the game’s design, so thats why only power based builds are recommended in PvE. The amount of defensive stats one need, is directly related to ones skill level and experience level.

Finally, I’m one of the ones that believes in learning by learning the meta from the beginning, no matter how many deaths and fails are involved Every mistake is an opportunity to learn and improve yourself.

Alright, I have time to post so i’ll try to address everything

Malrona: I don’t think you quite understand this fight. You WANT to get hit by the frontal cone breath because the poison gives you a gigantic DPS boost for a few seconds. Combo this with a reflect and everyone stacked in melee and you’ll do atleast 50% of her health. The other attack (red circles) is a projectile that can reflected or blocked. Every class but warrior and necro has a party wide projectile defense spell. She alternates between those 2 attacks with the 1st one being random.

Perfect builds: Perfect builds aren’t designed around the creator having latency issues. If a build is tailored in that direction, then it will have features or adjustments that will be a non issue for people with reliable internet. 30/25/0/15/0 is probably the perfect all around build, because it has the option of traiting for signets which can be very good for survivability.

Frost Spirit It’s a common misconception for people to think Frost Spirit deaths are a problem. It’s not due to a patch that made spirits persist for around ~15s after their death. Even if it dies, you’ll continue to get the buff which also has no ICD, as long as you remain in the target area. The net result is around ~8s downtime if it dies. It’ll also buff way more than 6 attacks on a warrior over 10s unless your RNG is very bad.

Overall, I think you need more experience running dungeons in general, and should start to venture outside of CoF, AC and TA.

Arran.9182:

TurtleDragon.3108:

Eurhetemec.9052:

TurtleDragon.3108:

Tl;dr: It’s not that berserker gear doesn’t work well in PUGS/non zerker groups, it’s YOU who doesn’t work well with glass cannon builds.

Except that obviously isn’t true and is basically just faux-elitist or confused-elitist backslapping/self-congratulation. Nikephoros’ argument doesn’t make sense on a very basic level. He’s a superb player and optimizer, but he basically lives in a fantasy world when it comes to player skill, as do a lot of posters, here, sadly. Claiming someone is “bad” because they prefer a non-full-zerker gearset in a messy PuG is completely unreasonable. It’s basically redefining “bad” as “not in the top 1% of players”. Which just shenanigans.

I mean, it’s true that the very best players, those few, really don’t benefit from non-zerker gear even in a messy PuG. They are extremely few in number, however.

Unfortunately there are a gigantic number of people who think they are in that 1% (just like with the wealth 1% IRL – 33% of Americans think they’re in it! Obviously only 1% are, and it’s not even all the same people!), but who would strongly benefit from, when coming to PuG, being in some more survivable gear.

Nikephoros’ “But you’ll get better if you get downed all the time!” argument obviously doesn’t hold a great deal of water. If you’re downed, you’re not really learning anything. Wearing full zerker will teach you that you need to be better, but it won’t necessarily let you learn how to get there.

This build might well benefit from Frost Spirit, I note, but there is some really faulty logic and unrealistic elitism going on here. You need to accept that most players will never, ever, be so good that they don’t benefit from non-zerker gear in a PuG. Even most full-zerker players who are in elite groups are definitely benefiting from Reflects, Aegis and so on, and are not good enough to pull it off without those.

No.

Gear (Armor/Trinkets) is the last thing I would change in a PUG because it has the least influence on personal survivability. There are plenty of things you can do to increase your survivability in PUGS without changing your gear.

And if you can’t tell why you downed most of the time, then you are tunnel visioning a lot. Most of the time it’s easy to tell if you got downed by an auto attack or if you were doing a bad job of managing your endurance. There’s a tell for almost everything in this game that’s avoidable.

I’m also not telling people they should play in zero reflect groups, because those “elite” players usually don’t do that as well. They always bring reflects if the content requires it.

Malrona!

all i have to say, Malrona.

get downed when in no red circles, and not being direct focus.

If you’re getting downed, that’s a l2p issue and also a problem with your group’s strategy. This fight is easily cheese-able with reflects or FGS if you understand the poison mechanic. If the fight is dragging out too long, its because you or multiple players are running builds like the one you are promoting as “perfect and high damage”

Bambula.3649:

wtf even for record runs a ranger can be used.
no even in most frac you dont need a longbow

Rangers, necros, and engineers are currently not used in record runs. Even if you use one for an unclaimed record atm, another guild would beat it with a composition that doesn’t include one.

Most ranger players are going to need a longbow or ranged of some sort in fractals because the strategies in PUG environments or in disorganized, low dps groups are quite different for fractals. This is also even more problematic when you consider the lvl 49 instability, where you are sometimes just better off ranging if you can range without dodging where otherwise you’d dodge while meleeing.

If we get dagger MH, i’d like it to be a single target power weapon as an alternative to sword. A third melee option that doesn’t animation lock would be great for PvE

Medens.4960:

Did the dudes who disapprove the build even try it yet? Something tells me they haven’t…
Why don’t you just go and try it first and thén legitimately burn it to the ground with critisism (or not).
And don’t say it’s common sense.

If common sense doesn’t work for you, then you could always compare this builds to other ones via spread sheets.

Anyone experienced in dungeon farming with a decent understanding of the meta will know why this build isn’t good with just common sense. You don’t need to try a build to identify any problems with it.

Eurhetemec.9052:

TurtleDragon.3108:

Tl;dr: It’s not that berserker gear doesn’t work well in PUGS/non zerker groups, it’s YOU who doesn’t work well with glass cannon builds.

Except that obviously isn’t true and is basically just faux-elitist or confused-elitist backslapping/self-congratulation. Nikephoros’ argument doesn’t make sense on a very basic level. He’s a superb player and optimizer, but he basically lives in a fantasy world when it comes to player skill, as do a lot of posters, here, sadly. Claiming someone is “bad” because they prefer a non-full-zerker gearset in a messy PuG is completely unreasonable. It’s basically redefining “bad” as “not in the top 1% of players”. Which just shenanigans.

I mean, it’s true that the very best players, those few, really don’t benefit from non-zerker gear even in a messy PuG. They are extremely few in number, however.

Unfortunately there are a gigantic number of people who think they are in that 1% (just like with the wealth 1% IRL – 33% of Americans think they’re in it! Obviously only 1% are, and it’s not even all the same people!), but who would strongly benefit from, when coming to PuG, being in some more survivable gear.

Nikephoros’ “But you’ll get better if you get downed all the time!” argument obviously doesn’t hold a great deal of water. If you’re downed, you’re not really learning anything. Wearing full zerker will teach you that you need to be better, but it won’t necessarily let you learn how to get there.

This build might well benefit from Frost Spirit, I note, but there is some really faulty logic and unrealistic elitism going on here. You need to accept that most players will never, ever, be so good that they don’t benefit from non-zerker gear in a PuG. Even most full-zerker players who are in elite groups are definitely benefiting from Reflects, Aegis and so on, and are not good enough to pull it off without those.

No.

Gear (Armor/Trinkets) is the last thing I would change in a PUG because it has the least influence on personal survivability. There are plenty of things you can do to increase your survivability in PUGS without changing your gear.

And if you can’t tell why you downed most of the time, then you are tunnel visioning a lot. Most of the time it’s easy to tell if you got downed by an auto attack or if you were doing a bad job of managing your endurance. There’s a tell for almost everything in this game that’s avoidable.

I’m also not telling people they should play in zero reflect groups, because those “elite” players usually don’t do that as well. They always bring reflects if the content requires it.

Himei.5379:

Once again, the only thing being mentioned is Damage (Ryu). There is more to this game than damage. Damage is KING in this game (pve) for speed clears but that is only possible due to the Stacking “exploit”. I’ve had fun on my speed clear runs but also fun on my PUG groups because it wasnt all Zerk. We didnt stack, and had fun using our class mechanics to complete the dungeon. It terms of damage, NOTHING beats 100B but thats again due to AI exploiting of stacking. IF AI was better, like a human, it would evade out of it. I kinda love the Toxic Nightmare Court, they almost play like a “human” and will evade out of a 100b time to time.

Ranger Design Philosophy:
The Ranger is a resilient profession that excels at skirmishing by drawing from nature to support themselves as well as their allies. Alongside their pet, they have some of the best single target and sustained damage that will whittle their opponents down.

To me, that seems pretty accurate to our design philosophy. Sword dps is great sustained dps, NOT burst but sustained. We got a good access to poison/bleed to whittle down and nature skills such as spirits or healing spring to support.

As for a thief in WvW, you technically are being defensive if you are use stealth to heal/break aggro even if its part of class mechanics/build/playstyle. Dont worry about it, I havent had many thieves kill me in WvW but I couldnt kill them too because they would stealth and run with their tails between their legs only to try and gank me again later (usually when Im fighting another person/group). Im not going to hate, its part of what makes a thief a thief and I do it also on my thief in WvW, lol.

Can we use some buffs, sure, never hurts BUT its better to not have it at all than have it only to be taken away (nerf) that hurts more IMO because people get too used to it.

1. Damage is king in this game, but it is not because of stacking. It is because the game is designed around active mitigation, where you can reflect, block or dodge key abilities and invalidate the need for tanky gear if you are skilled enough.
Stacking isn’t an exploit and it’s done because
*Melee is king, so you are grouped up in melee anyways
*Boons, buffs and blasts have a small range, so if you are scattered out ranging you won’t be able to buff or heal your team mates
*You can group up mobs for cleaving them down instead of having them scattered all over the place

2. 100 blades is not that high of damage. Don’t fall for big number syndrome. Highest hit/channel =/= highest DPS. Hundred blades is channeled over ~4s so the DPS is the channel divided by 4. Thieves and eles do way more DPS

There are a bunch of misconceptions in here from you and other posters. The idea that glass cannon berserker builds do not work in PUGS, or in non full berserker groups is not true at all. Here’s a quote from Nikephoros on a different forum

My comment is that if you’re a strong player, even if youre in a bad pug you want dps builds/gear. The idea that “oh I pug a lot so I need tankier gear” is a fallacy. You might as well be saying, “I depend on being carried by my Guardian reflects and Aegis and when I pug I fold up because I’m bad.”

I would argue that what changes in bad pugs is tactics not gear. In a bad pugs with weak reflects, you might not be able to stack behind a WoR and dps in melee. You might have to range-kite instead. You might have to dodge in and out, more of a hit and run style. But even if you’re ranging and even if youre playing hit and run you want to be in DPS gear with a dps build. If you tailor your build and gear tankier it isn’t because you’re in a bad pug, you are a bad pug.

Defense in this game isn’t from passive mitigation, it’s from active mitigation. Going full berserker will usually make you more aware of what you need to avoid on each encounter as well.

Even if it’s not a high damage build, Frost Spirit would benefit your party as well with an average 7% dps increase. You’re also wasting 2 utility lots for what you could do with one if you had 30 in marksmanship for a SoS/Protect me combo.

Tl;dr: It’s not that berserker gear doesn’t work well in PUGS/non zerker groups, it’s YOU who doesn’t work well with glass cannon builds.

law.9410:

My tests were done on a training dummy so vuln was taken into play. Also, I think maul can shave some time off of the aftercast of the 3rd attack in the chain. Test it yourself if you don’t believe me. But ya I was using martial master as well (I wasn’t using two handed training). Don’t get me wrong, I think Greatsword needs a buff like no other and why they gave the weapon with no evades, and no poison access, lower dps is beyond me.

Your numbers are pretty consistent with that post I linked. But the issue is that you are not testing them under the same conditions, and Maul’s extra vulnerability stacks are skewing your results and making the gap appear smaller than it is. Theorycraft comparisons are done using the same conditions, and usually under optimal conditions too.

In a group environment, both sword and GS can be used against targets with 25 vulnerability stacks. Also, i’m not sure, but i believe the post I linked did not factor in 2H training.

Edit: i just noticed Maul’s vuln stacks were factored in as a 5.9% sustained DPS.

25 Vulnerability stacks, no 2H training
( (0.689)(6) + (2.133)(.75) ) / 6.75 = 0.849 c/s
Sword better by 24.38%

20 or less Vuln stacks, no 2H training, on a boss ( 4.8s vuln)
(( (0.689)(6) + (2.133)(.75) ) * 1.0354 ) / 6.75 = 0.879 c/s
Sword is better by 20%

25 Vulnerability stacks with 2H training
(( (0.689)(6) + (2.133)(.75) ) *1.05 )/ 6.75 = 0.891 c/s
Sword better by 18.5%

20 or less Vuln stacks with 2H training on a boss ( 4.8s vuln)
(( (0.689)(6) + (2.133)(.75) ) * 1.0354 * 1.05 ) / 6.75 = .923 c/s
Sword better by 14.4%

Correct me if I made a mistake, I didn’t math out the original equations I used in here.

law.9410:

Don’t be a afraid to use Greatsword as other people have stated. GS autoattack plus maul spam does like 9% less dps than sword autoattack. When you factor in your pet damage, the fact that you’re in a group, and the vuln from maul, the damage difference is minimal. Now in a PvP situation, it’s a different story.

As much as I like GS, this isn’t true at all.

GS is behind by ~17% in theory. The difference is greater in actual play when you factor in latency and error since theorycrafted DPS almost never translates 100% into real play. It’ll feel like its behind by ~20-25%. Martial mastery helps, but no viable PvE dps build can go that far into Wilderness Survival.

Source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Sword-better-than-Greatsword-Explain/first#post3051627

GS is still good on max melee range fights or ones where you interrupt your sword auto attack so much that it slows down your AA by a significant margin.

Edit: Accidently said Nature Magic instead of Wilderness survival

No Frost Spirit = automatic fail. It’s the equivalent of bringing 1 warrior and having him run 0 banners

Signet of Stone is fairly useless without 30 in marksmanship as well.

This build is also missing the ranger’s best modifier (25 Skirmishing). I wouldn’t call this build high damage in it’s current form.

.

Metron.2517:

Well I tried to do the sword+horn once, and the auto-attacks made me sick and tried… good dmg though, but I feel much more nicer when I have full control over my dodges and movement in general. I’ll try GS then. Pets choises were oriented in cond dmg. Felines good dmg + bleeding and drakes confusion breath were good imo. I’ll experiment more with pets also. And for gear choise.. is full berserker, am I right ?

Here’s a small video guide that will help with the sword a bit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUwHpIxY52U

Yes to berserker gear. 20/25/0/25/0 for a GS focused build.

Can’t go wrong with felines, drakes, birds or red moas. Jungle stalker is the best general use pet, with river drake on swap for trash/multi target. Switch one for red moa if your party is struggling on fury.

Ropechef.6192:

If YOU were given the design choice. how would YOU set up the instance ownership concept?

Not have one in the first place, which also means removing the story mode requirements and the unlocking events for CoE and CoF. I’d also add a separate party mode where you have one party leader, and only he can kick, invite or transfer ownership of the party. The current party mode also needs a bit more restrictions on kicking, as well as major improvements to the LFG system.

In the game as it is right now, I’d prefer a pet-less option. It’s just awful in this game when the devs don’t make an active effort to fix any of the problems associated with it and balance accordingly.

If the pet system was as refined and good as in other MMOs (cough* WoW cough*), I’d prefer the pet system.

Zodiac armor on a blue sylvari

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Collaborative-Development-Ranger-Profession/page/3#post3683219
QoL improvements for pets in PvE.