Showing Posts For Valderius Rex.4108:
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Looking over the thief traits and a support oriented venom/healer thief looks really interesting. Thinking 30/0/30/0/10 with all the venom traits, apothecary’s/giver gear. Run the new heal venom, ult venom, skale, devourer, and shadow refuge for more support goodness.
Seeing as I don’t give a crap about zergvzerg, it would be for pve or spvp.
Anyone tried this yet?
Wtb the old sword kick. No leap or cripple, mini knock back. Honestly I’ll take the current kick without the leap. It attacks fast enough that 1 leap out of 3 hits is sufficiently sticky. Especially against a crippled target.
There could be a few reasons for this.
1) Mighty Roar only works if you are in combat. If the two of you are just running around you won’t get the buff.
2) roar has a 600 aoe and the longbow has 1200-1500 range. It’s easy to be out of the buff range.
The best thing to do is, while in combat, call the cat to you with f3, hit f2 to get the might, then send him back to fight.
Been away from the game for about a year and I’m looking to get back into GW2. I’m 25, M, and play on US pacific time. Avid dungeon runner and would be interested in learning the sPvP metagame if I had a good team.
Never been a huge fan of WvW, it’s a bit swarmy for my tastes, but a lot could have changed in a year. Who knows?
Lemme know if you’ve got a good mature group that would be welcoming of a new (old?) face.
Got the link to work, here’s what I think:
-Steady focus is really only good if you’re a longbow sniper. You’ve got to dodge a ton in dungeons so you’ll rarely get the bonus.
-Cats die absurdly fast in dungeons, especially with 0 points in beastmastery. You’ll find they get virtually one-shot all the time.
-Vigorous Renewal in the survival tree is really good, as is Shared Anguish. One of those could replace wilderness knowledge if you decided not to use sharpening stone.
-I really don’t like SS, too long of a recharge. That’s a personal thing though. Same with Viper Trap. I find the combo fields on Flame/Frost to just be more valuable. I can see why you use it though, not having any other way to easily inflict poison.
-Consider runes of the Nightmare (condition damage/duration) over runes of the elementalist. Those will benefit your bleeds and poison as well as chill/burn.
-If you can find 5 trait points to spare somewhere, Zephyr’s Speed in the beast mastery line is REALLY good.
Your build link didn’t work so I can’t make specific comments on your build, but I’m absolutely loving my condition ranger. I run shortbow/sword & dagger. The torch, to me, is a nice weapon but considering I use the shortbow as my primary weapon I don’t like having to swap weapons to apply a burn, which is massive damage.
Gear is sigil of earth on the shortbow, sigil of earth on the sword and the lifesteal on crit for the dagger. the bow is my main damage weapon while the blades let me dodge around anything that gets too close while still applying good condition stacks.
I use Rabid armor/weapons (can get it out of TA/CM/HotW) and Rampager (Coral) jewelry. My power is pretty much garbage, but that’s ok because the shortbow doesn’t have much upfront damage anyhow. My crit rate hovers around 55% with no buffs which means I can proc extra bleeds from Sharpened Edges and Sigil of Earth reliably. Runes are 6x Undead. The toughness from the rabid gear and wilderness survival traits feeds into the set bonus on those nicely, plus they make me a bit more durable in a fight.
For utilities, I pick 2 between flame, frost, and spike trap, depending on the group/fight i’m in and round the last slot out with either QZ for damage or Lightning reflexes for the stunbreak, again depending on the situation. For an elite i’ve almost always got Entangle, swapping to Rampage as One for big boss fights. Heal can either be spring or troll ugunate, up to personal preference.
Been running 0/30/20/0/20 for traits. I need 30 in Skirmishing for trapper’s expertise and trap potency. 20 in survival gives me a bit of toughness and condition damage, while 20 in BM pumps up the pets a bit and gives me rending attacks.
I favor cats and devourers for pets. The cats hit like mac trucks and the devourers are good reliable damage as well as reasonably tanky. Both can inflict nice amounts of condition damage on their own and with the shortbow #4. Rending attacks and expertiese training helps to capitalize on this.
As for your specific questions:
1) If you’re using the axe as a primary weapon, the torch is a nice weapon. Flame trap can replace it, so it’s really down to the utility slots.
2) Carrion and Rabid are probably your best stats for condition focused builds. Either way, you’re mostly focused on dodging rather than straight up soaking damage. Can’t answer to the power question, seeing as I rely entirely on conditions to do my damage.
3) See #1
4) I only use ss in PvP lto assassinate targets or against bosses that i can’t get close enough to throw a trap at. SS has a pretty long recharge considering it only gives you 5 bleeds
5) Empathic Bond is one of the best condition removal options the ranger has. If you have 30 in Survival it’s hard not to take.
Best of luck
As far as crit chance goes, you can feel good about ‘over stacking’ crit chance if you’re trying to trigger a lot of on-crit effects like sigils of air/blood/fire.
If they ever make sharpened edges and companion’s might into usable traits (the current 1 second duration is bs) there could be a really strong build there using the axe and short bow.
It feels so out of place especially with frost and flame granting great combo potential. Can we revisit this perhaps? I never end up using it because of how one-dimentional it feels. Spike gives damage AND control. Flame/frost give damage/control AND support. Viper gives…snakes. Yawn.
It works just fine but the display is a bit buggy. My pets are always dealing significantly increased condition damage with the trait equipped but their condition damage displays as 0 until you swap pets. It also helps if you open the window while you’re in combat.
Still holding out for a Dolyak, but moose would be acceptable too.
I am glad that yours builds are not destroyed. Heavy crit builds are now useless. I play AH sword/GS with High crit rate and my setup is entirely destroyed. Thanks Arenanet for destroying builds based on crit. So now we can just use the same spec/builds/gear.
This is entirely not true. Sure, Altruistic Healing took a heavy thump from this change, but you can still run crit builds to great effect. I’m currently running one on my guardian based on Empowering Might (grants AoE might on crit) that easily keeps up 6-8 stacks of might on the entire group. I do quite a bit of damage on my own and make the real DPS focused builds do godlike damage.
The vigor change was a huge help for me as I now have nearly full up time on vigor, meaning less incoming damage for me and more group healing thanks to Selfless Daring (heal on dodge roll).
Just because one specific (and generally overused) build took a hit doesn’t mean crit guardians or guardians in general are dead. Be more flexible.
Very good idea. Would make me much more inclined to use buff pets like Red Moas and Fern Hounds.
SB + GS work great with the new marksmanship tree (reliable opening strikes, longer daze/stun)
im using SB/Axe/dagger for a bleed build, works fantastic
GS/sword/dagger still best for bunker
honestly i feel most if not all ranger weapons are now viable. havent tested LB yet.
The longbow feels VERY nice now entirely because of the fixed opening strikes. With 30 in marksmanship and a longbow, you’ve got 20 vuln on your target every time you start a fight thanks to the kill refresh. Throw in a +10% vulnerability duration sigil on your bow and you give yourself, your pet, and anyone else attacking your target +20% damage. That’s absolutely massive.
They’re more reliable than you think.
I had a cat going toe to toe with a champion giant in Orr just today because I was making smart calls about when to send him in for a burst of damage and when to pull him back. The cat never died once and it avoided the giant’s AoE stomp every time. The improved signet of the hunt is a godsend for squishy cats and hawks, it lets you dart in and out of battle very nicely.
A solid rule is to think of your pet in terms of player classes. Tanky pets like bears, boars, and drakes can survive roughly the same situations as soldiers (warriors/guardians). Your fragile damage dealers like birds and cats are more analogous to thieves or dagger elementalists. Pick your moment carefully to send them into battle and be ready to quickly swap/heal/retreat them should they come under fire.
If you know you’re headed into a fight with a lot of AoE damage (Subject Alpha in CoE comes to mind) pick something that can either stand back and fire or shrug off a few hits. Devourers are great picks against dungeon bosses. They’re plenty tough, don’t have to go melee, and will naturally knock back and evade if something gets too close.
(edited by Valderius Rex.4108)
What I expect from the next patch:
1) Signet of the Hunt 25% move speed
2) Arrows travel slightly faster
3) There is no 3)There might be other stuff but I expect nothing. That said I am happy about those two changes.
There will be a 3, and a 4 most likely.
3 Will be some re-written tooltips and possibly obscure bug fixes. 4 will likely be an attack speed/base damage nerf to compensate for the fact that arrows actually hit targets.
For a condition ranger, I’m loving runes of the Undead in my Rabid armor. Bleeds hit REALLY hard.
I’ve got a weird build that ends up giving me a lot of armor but virtually no max HP. As far as ‘tanking’ goes I find I have no problem being in the thick of fights thanks to my great dodges. With sword/dagger, vigor from heals, and the passive 50% extra endurance nothing can touch you. If I do take a couple hits my toughness is enough to keep me from dropping right away. Gives me time to jump out with 2, heal, then dive back in.
If you build specificly tank, the great sword is an amazing weapon. Get good at timing your third strike and you can evade everything. 4 on the GS is a very strong projectile block/melee counterblow. Finally, rangers can have great regen through signet of the wild and natural healing (BM 30). Its not as good as a tank warrior or guardian regen but a ranger is infinitely more evasive than either.
Gotta echo our fantastic agility. I love being the lowest max HP guy in the group and “tanking” boss monsters better than anyone because they can never hit me.
Plus, traps. Oh my god the aoe CC is amazing. Can’t get over the amazing control frost/ spike traps give along with a wolf and entangle. Nothing moves if I don’t want it to.
I use the same weapon set as you, using the SB whenever I can. I swap to the blades when something gets too close. Dodge around it, lock it up with a few cripples, then use 2 to make space to go back to the bow.
It feels very fluid and natural. Its one of the few classes where I actually use both weapon sets regularly.
Your build is extremely similar to mine. I’ve been having great sucuess with rabid (cond/prec/tough) gear and a mix of rampager (prec/con/pwr) and carrion (cond/pwr/ vit) jewelry. As long as I can keep my precision high enough to get a crit rate between 50 and 60% (for extra bleeding from sharpened edges and sigil of earth) I dump everything I can into condition damage and don’t worry much about power or crit damage. Flame/spike traps and constant short bow bleed/poison is enough to tick down thousands of damage a second consistently.
That will work well for a while, but in group content and places like Orr, you’ll be frequently swapping pets just to keep them alive, making master’s bond kinda worthless. The good news is by frequently swapping you’ll gain lots of bonus quickness.
Carrion or rabid.
Rampager is pretty mediocre since rangers are a lil bad at getting bonuses to critting (fury and the likes) and have bad bonuses for critting (that one tier one major trait for a 1s bleed on 2/3 of your crits other classes have as good if not better minor trait versions of this, its roughly a 5% dmg buff on condi heavy, crit heavy builds. Not enough to cover what you lost for going crit instead of power.)Carrion if you aren’t running troll ungent and something like signet of the wild or allot of regen.
Rabid if you are.
Would love to run rabid jewels, but to my knowledge they don’t exist. What do?
And I do run troll ug. Love the huge regen on it.
I’ve got 15 into the BM line. 5 is almost must have for the great quickness on swap. 10 is nice for lowering the CD on your f2 or granting might on swap, and 15 gives a nice CD reduction on the swap itself.
Going to 20 could. Certainly be nice if you specialize in one type of pet, but much more that seems like your value per point really falls off.
Hounds are indeed very useful. They’re a touch on the squishy side so don’t expect them to tank much. They do very nice damage, apply burns, and provide frequent leap finishers.
Currently using rabid weapon/armor with rampager (coral) jewelry. Traits are 0/30/25/0/15. Sigil of earth in short bow, runes of the undead in armor.
So far I love the build and it has served me very well in PvE, dungeons, and my brief trips into spvp. My conditions hit like a truck (110+ per bleed tick at L80) and I have tons of AoE CC effects to keep targets at bay. My question is this, should I switch some/all of my jewelry from rampager (coral) to carrion (crhysolica or however the hell it’s spelled)? I would gain a fair bit of HP, something the build lacks, and even more damage. The trade off would be a big chunk of my critical chance which means far fewer triggers on sharpened edges and my sigil of earth.
Would this potentially be worth it? Opinions, comments, questions are welcome.
Pets die REALLY fast to dungeon monsters, there’s nothing you can really do about it. For that reason, I won’t bring anything other than my devourers into dungeons. They can attack from range and will tunnel underground if anything gets too close. That combined with their tough armor gives them a shot at actually surviving the fight to do damage…until they stand in a huge boss AoE and get one-shot.
The sword/x style is more about being defensive and evasive than it is about raw damage. I use sword/dagger as a backup weapon combo for my bow and it’s very nice when something gets too close for comfort. Cut it a few times, dodge behind, a couple more attacks, dodge away, throw a dagger, and switch back to the bow. My target spends a nice amount of time missing its attacks while the bleeds my shortbow has inflicted tick away its health.
I rarely find myself just standing my ground and swinging away with it, the greatsword is much better for that with its higher damage and frequent evades.
You’ll see a lot of Iron Legion guardians and warriors (as well as engineers of course) among the Charr NPCs and the Ash Legion stalkers use quite a few necromancer spells. Blood has its share of rangers, but they’re typically close combat fighters, whereas the ash rangers tend to prefer the qucik shortbow over the long.
" wow wtf, rangers are so OP" <———-has anyone ever said this?
Invokes the old man in me:
“Well back in my day, read Early Beta stages, Rangers we as powerful as everyone else is now. Spirits were useful, weapons hit harder, even pets just plain did more.”To be honest though, I wasn’t in any of the beta events and this is just me miming what I heard from many players on the internet.
I wouldn’t say rangers were as strong, I’d say they were insanely OP. Rapid fire on the long bow was an immediate death sentence and when a ranger popped Rampage as One your only option was to run like hell. Not like it helped any, they’d just pull out the greatsword, swoop after you, and kill you with Quickening Zypher before the stun wore off.
That said, rangers have been tremendously overnerfed.
Reposed from the Ranger section, seems relevant here too.
We all know pets get mauled very quickly in dungeons, mostly because they don’t react like we do and get the heck out of the way of huge killer attacks.
Proposed solution: change the current f3 command (an only marginally useful heel) to a defensive command that functions similarly to the current f2. These commands would replace one of the pet’s existing automatic skills and would be determined by the family of the pet.
Why is this good? It takes some of the AI randomness out of ranger pets and puts more of the ranger’s available tools in the hands of the player. Skilled rangers would be able to simultainously manage their own abilities and issue commands to their pets rather than having their dead weight wolf limping behind them because it got mauled 2 seconds after being called out.
Potential new f3 skills:
Bear: Defy Pain-no change needed.
Bird: Swoop-fly into the air and evade attacks (low CD)
Canine: crippling leap-quickly attack your foe with an evasive leap (similar to sword skill 3)
Devourer: Devourer retreat-no change needed
Drake: Tail whip-block incoming attacks then retaliate against all nearby foes
Moa: Blinding retreat-jump backwards evading attacks and blinding nearby foes with a spray of feathers. (Replaces frenzied attack)
Feline: Stalk-gain stealth and evade incoming attacks. (replaces bite, jaguar needs new f2)
Spider: Web- evade attacks using a web that immobilizes nearby foes.
Porcine: Maul-block incoming attacks and retaliate with a bleeding tusk attack.
The above skills are just ideas so saying this one is OP or that one doesn’t do enough is kinda pointless. The point is to get the idea out there so the community (and hopefully Anet) can see them. As an avid ranger, I would love to be able to have my pets AND find them useful in big fights.
Take the trapper’s experiese trait and chuck it at your target. That works well enough.
+1
This has been screwing me up since day one, doubly so because I play a ranger and end up selecting my pet.
We all know pets get mauled very quickly in dungeons, mostly because they don’t react like we do and get the heck out of the way of huge killer attacks.
Proposed solution: change the current f3 command (an only marginally useful heel) to a defensive command that functions similarly to the current f2. These commands would replace one of the pet’s existing automatic skills and would be determined by the family of the pet.
Why is this good? It takes some of the AI randomness out of ranger pets and puts more of the ranger’s available tools in the hands of the player. Skilled rangers would be able to simultainously manage their own abilities and issue commands to their pets rather than having their dead weight wolf limping behind them because it got mauled 2 seconds after being called out.
Potential new f3 skills:
Bear: Defy Pain-no change needed.
Bird: Swoop-fly into the air and evade attacks (low CD)
Canine: crippling leap-quickly attack your foe with an evasive leap (similar to sword skill 3)
Devourer: Devourer retreat-no change needed
Drake: Tail whip-block incoming attacks then retaliate against all nearby foes
Moa: Blinding retreat-jump backwards evading attacks and blinding nearby foes with a spray of feathers. (Replaces frenzied attack)
Feline: Stalk-gain stealth and evade incoming attacks. (replaces bite, jaguar needs new f2)
Spider: Web- evade attacks using a web that immobilizes nearby foes.
Porcine: Maul-block incoming attacks and retaliate with a bleeding tusk attack.
The above skills are just ideas so saying this one is OP or that one doesn’t do enough is kinda pointless. The point is to get the idea out there so the community (and hopefully Anet) can see them. As an avid ranger, I would love to be able to have my pets AND find them useful in big fights.
I think I prefer shared anguish over that trait. It doesn’t trigger quite as frequently but it’s much more reliable at getting you out of jams.
I’ve been favoring TU lately even in group PvE (dungeons) for several reasons.
1. Shorter CD: I can more reliably save myself and my pet.
2. More overall healing
3. More mobility, don’t need to stand in the field
4. Stacks with regeneration from guardians, engis, etc.
5. Condition removal less necessary in groups with necros/guardians/mesmers due to the abundant light fields.
(edited by Valderius Rex.4108)
Known issue. Likely will be fixed in an upcoming patch within the next couple weeks.
I wear one of the monocle style eye pieces. Looks very nice on a Charr and makes sense if you’re playing a marksman of sorts (Ranger/Warrior/Engi).
I use it for the active eff-ehehehe…
Sorry, I can’t say it with a straight face.
Every time I accidentally activate that while running around the world, I die a little inside.
I’m set up for condition/crit kills using sharpened edges and sigil of earth to stack up the bleeds. For weapons I use the short bow (obviously, so much bleed dmg) and the sword/dagger combo. A lot if condition rangers prefer the torch over the dagger, but traiting heavily into traps makes that really unnecessary. Flame trap makes a great aoe burner that’s usable at range with a crazy low 12 sec CD.
With that in mind the sword/dagger gives me great evasion with 3 active dodge abilities, a ranged bleed/cripple for more damage and CC, and 2 ways to inflict poison. Because I’m so dodgy I can run circles around my target while the dots chew up their HP. As for people who say sword is “bugged” or “unusable”, using skills 2,3, or 4 will all break you out of the attack chain while giving a nice long ‘gtfo’ dodge. Even without those there are distunct windows in which you can dodge roll without jumping back onto your target. It just takes practice to learn
That would bug me for the same reason those big backpacks bug me. A Dodge roll wouldbe kinda impossible.
I don’t use them because of their F2 ability being relatively worthless and because they die easily.
Raven and Owl user here. Good (and very fast) F2, good damage, and with traits, extremely sturdy.
Also they’re small (and thus non-intrusive), and party friendly.
Not sure why you say birds are durable and pigs aren’t. Pigs have over 1k more vit at L80 and the same toughness as birds. I’ll give you the fact that those slashes hurt but its really utility over damage issue.
Pretty simple, If player A lays down a fire field and player B shoots through it causing a burn, which condition damage/duration stat is used to calculate the damage?
Plushy quaggan. NOW. Seriously guys, why is this not priority one?
We see tons of bears and cats in PvE, spiders and canines are PvP favorites, bird have something of a following, And some rangers swear by devourers. Pigs though, nothing. I don’t get why not. The forge skill can give you a great buff, condition, cc, or stealth to initiate combat depending on which one you take. They have a solid bleed attack, a knockdown that can actually hit moving targets, and they don’t explode immediately.
Is there some reason people never use porcine pets? drakes I understand. The breath attacks are lousy. But why no piggies?
For me it was the music. When I first watched the ‘Races of Tyria video anet put out forever ago I was hooked. The moment that huge percussive brass anthem played behind Steve Blum growling out Rytlock’s voice there was no going back.
“We rip each day from life’s teeth.” Enough said.
Traps are amazing if you trait into them.
This discussion is about spirits. Those are terrible. I would be OK with their mediocre buffs if they behaved more like a guardian’s spirit weapon. Let them follow us without a trait and make them invulnerable. Modify the CD/duration if you have to but summoning a spirit is just pointless currently. Even if not directly targeted they get popped by aoe damage within 4 seconds every time.
If you’re going for crit DMG runes (like eagle or divinity) go with berserker. Con damage doesn’t crit so rampager is going to be sub par.
Earth on my short bow, geomancy on my sword, corruption on my dagger. Considering changing that corruption sigil to something more reliable. Vamp seems like a good one to help me stay alive in melee range. Might just go for another earth for better bleeds though.
Started playing with a group of friends who don’t log in much anymore so now I’m looking for a new community to join. Love PvE group content (dungeons) and would be interested in sPvP with a stable team. Not opposed to WvW but have yet to find it anything but a disorganized charlie-foxtrot.
Looking for a primarily adult (21+) group of regular, friendly players interested in being a solid personality driven online community.
Sound like your guild? I’m Valderius (human guardian), Valdrec Baneclaw (Charr ranger) or Valtilial (Sylvari mesmer). Shoot me a message, we can talk.
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