Ehmry Bay Server Forum for Guild Wars 2

I promised someone I'd write this up a while back, so I figured I'd actually sit down and do it.

I've been running a regen/condi ranger build for a few months, and I absolutely love it.  It's very survivable - it has a lot of healing and condition removal, and it does a fair amount of damage (mostly conditions).

Here's the build I'm currently running:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/...

It's mostly based off this guide, with a few differences:
http://intothemists....rd_regen_ranger

TL;DR:

• armor / weapons: Apothecary’s
  
• runes: Melandru
  
• weapons: axe/dagger and sword/torch
  
• sigils: corruption/geomancy and hydromancy/smoldering
  
• traits: 0 / 0 / 6 (VI,VII,XI) / 6 (III,VIII,XII) / 2 (III)
  
• skills: Healing Spring / Lightning Reflexes / "Guard" / Signet of Renewal / Entangle
  
• pets: Wolf / Krytan Drakehound
  
• food: Super (/Rare) Veggie Pizza
  
• spam "Guard", stay alive

General:
The build uses Apothecary’s stats to give a lot of healing power and condition damage, while using "Guard" and traits to maintain constant regen.  Most of the damage comes from conditions.

Armor / Weapons:
Apothecary’s armor and weapons give a ton of healing power, and a lot of condition damage / toughness.

All my armor is exotic apothecary’s, and all my trinkets are ascended apothecary’s except my backpiece (I made Sights Be True (Infused) a while ago, and that shit was expensive).

My weapons should be all apothecary's, but I already happened to have an ascended soldier's sword.

Runes:
Melandru.  I had a spare set from a long time ago, and the increased toughness + reduced condition and stun duration works wonders with this build.

Weapons:
Weapons are axe/dagger and sword/torch.  Weapon dodge on each set, check the Into the Mists guide for a better breakdown.

Axe / Dagger:

1: might, 2: bleeding, 3: chill, 4: poison, 5: cripple

Sword / Torch:

1: cripple / might (chain 2 and 3), 2: cripple (chain 2), 3: poison, 4: burning, 5: moar burning (so much burning)

Sigils:
Corruption:

+250 condition damage helps a lot.

Geomancy:

10 seconds of bleeding on every swap to Axe / Dagger.  With Axe 2, this adds up to a lot of damage.

Hydromancy:

2 seconds of chill on every swap to Sword / Torch.  Makes targets easier to hit with the first sword whack, after which you're locked on.  Also, chill is just awesome.

Smoldering:

+20% burning duration.  So. Much. Burning.

Traits:
Wilderness Survival:

Wilderness Knowledge:

This reduces the recharge on survival skills (Lightning Reflexes and Entangle) by 20%.  It's mostly good for Entangle, so you can land that 12 seconds more often.

Off-hand Training:

Reduces recharge and increases range of off-hand skills (dagger / torch).  Incredibly useful in general, but especially for the torch's Bonfire skill, as its radius is increased significantly.

Empathic Bond:

Your pets periodically take conditions from you (every 10 seconds).  Your pets have more health than you, and you can swap them every 20 seconds to reset conditions and health, so you might as well give them your conditions.

Nature Magic:

Nature's Bounty:

Increases your regen duration by 33%.  Simple, but helpful.

Evasive Purity:

Dodging removes Blinded and Poisoned (10 second recharge).  This is a lifesaver.  Basically, always dodge before you heal, just in case.

Nature's Voice:

Shouts apply regeneration and swiftness to allies.  This is where "Guard" comes in.  Regen lasts 16.25 seconds, swiftness lasts 13 seconds.  This, plus Shout Mastery (below), is the backbone of the build.

Beastmastery:

Shout Mastery:

Reduces recharge on shouts by 20%, bringing "Guard" down to 12 seconds.  With this, you can maintain constant regeneration and swiftness on yourself and any allies around you.  The other half of the backbone of the build.

Skills:
Healing Spring:

Almost 6000 burst healing (over a quarter of your health), another 7000 in regen.  I've tried troll unguent briefly, it just doesn't compare (wayyyyy too slow).  Also, longest water field in the game.

Lightning Reflexes:

Handy to get of stun / immobilize, or just get the hell out of the way of something.  Watch yourself around cliffs, though.

"Guard":

Most important skill of the build, applies constant regeneration and almost-constant swiftness (swap to a warhorn for a sec to get constant swiftness).  Spam this on recharge like your life depends on it - because it does.  Regen heals for about 300 per tick, so it'll greatly mitigate condition damage you take.

Signet of Renewal:

Active:

Cures a condition every ten seconds.  Handy for staying alive.

Passive:

Pet-bound AOE condition removal for allies within a 600 unit radius.  Warning: if your pet is low, this will probably kill it soon, so be prepared to swap pets right after you pop the signet.

Entangle:

AOE Immobilize (1 second, 5 stacks = 5 seconds*), bleeding (8 seconds, 5 stacks).  Handy for keeping enemies in one place to wail on them, or keeping them trapped in your bonfire - if you can pull that off successfully, you'll drain between 1/4 and 1/2 of their health in 8 seconds.

* kind of, they can blink out of it and get away from the roots so the rest isn't applied.

Pets:
Both pets are canine, which have an AI-controlled knockdown skill on a 40 second recharge.
Wolf:

AOE fear, handy for: reviving allies, being downed, stomping enemies (scares away revivers), knocking enemies off cliffs and laughing, etc.

Krytan Drakehound:

AOE immobilize - see Entangle.

Food:
Super Veggie Pizza (or Rare if you're rich): +condition duration, + condition damage.

Gameplay:
See Videos (next post) and Into the Mists write-up (above).

Perks:

Videos:
vs. Thief + Warrior (mostly thief)
A couple GoM killed me 2v1 near SE sentry.  I respawned at hills, ran outside, and apparently they wanted more.  Killed the warrior once, then fought the thief until the warrior ran back (from SW spawn).  Stomped the warrior again, and finally stomped the thief.


vs. Power Ranger
This one is fun.  A GoM [ASH] ranger snuck up on me while I was rezing someone, his Rapid Fire took down half my health before I knew what hit me.  I then proceeded to kill him in less than a minute.


vs. Thief
Last fight from a series of three (there was a draw after this, went on for 7 minutes before the thief had to leave).  First fight was awesome, happened spontaneously at SE camp and took about 5 minutes.  I didn't stomp him, whispered him, and we moved to Obsidian Sanctum for more fights.  Unfortunately I didn't record the first one.  Overall I went 2-1.


vs Ranger, Warrior, and Necro
A ranger /laughed at me after winning 3v1.  I was mildly annoyed, so I ran back and killed them.  All three, at the same time.  Apparently my character is dangerous when I'm mildly annoyed.

There were a few times I got really lucky during this fight.  The first stomp I got interrupted just after I pulled it off, there were two times I nearly jumped off the ledge, etc.  Mostly, I just tried to stay alive and land as many conditions on them as possible.




More videos coming soon (I have a few to still go through).
Edited by thetoothpick, 11 January 2015 - 02:53 PM.

Tks Toothpickers...am looking forward to finishing leveling my ranger...gonna check with fay what hes using but I prefer melee to spamming longbow skill2...so I'll probably end up looking over your build.

New video up, a 1v3.

oh god, poor bear bow ranger, he did almost everything wrong in this fight

What happen when you meet your own build in wvw? Does it last forever with all this condi cleanse, dodge and regen?

I think I might have to fully adopt your build, Fair, and give it a try. Though, I'm sure I won't play it nearly as well as you lol.

Gudradain, on 11 January 2015 - 10:42 PM, said:

Pretty much.  I actually hit a DR ranger right after that last video, who was basically running my build.  I cut it out because it was really boring, mostly just us circling each other and healing a lot until other people showed up.

HotTotti, on 11 January 2015 - 11:13 PM, said:

It's quite a bit of fun, IMO, but it's a completely different playstyle for ranger.  Took me a bit to adjust, but I think it's totally worth it.

If you don't want to fully commit yet, you can kind of try it out in PvP, using Settler's instead of Apothecary's.

Also, it took me a while to get as comfortable as I am with the build, but you'll get there too .

thetoothpick, on 12 January 2015 - 11:44 AM, said:

I already run a build similar to yours, but I use full Dire. Works well for me in PvP, not so much in WvW. :-|  When it works though, it's a blast. I'll make those few changes and see how it works.

HotTotti, on 12 January 2015 - 09:48 PM, said:

Oh then go for it.  Once you can keep regen up and time your weapon dodges properly, it gets hard to kill you.

Update:

I've switched to using Signet of the Wild - the stability and extra regen are useful, and I don't miss the condi clear from Signet of Renewal very much.

Yeah finished my ranger not sure so far how well its holding...so far am sword/dagger...for major evades and mobility + unfortunately longbow for the stealth...and knockback...rapid fire is just a bonus tho I can see why people fully trait for rapid fire since you can get it down to 8 sec maybe less...pretty op spamming dps it can be.

But I think Toothpick ill stick to trying for now sword/dagger and axe/torch or axe/axe.

How well do you do against thieves?

Holden McGroin, on 25 January 2015 - 10:51 AM, said:

Depends on the thief.

See the first and third videos above for a couple examples.

I don't know much about thief builds, but there are some I can kill fairly easily, and others that just rape me.  The majority are somewhere in the middle.

thetoothpick, on 25 January 2015 - 05:17 PM, said:

Thieves are usually measured by the player not the build

except condi thieves....they are cancer

For burst thieves, I'd expect it depends on how well and often they can burst, and the extent of their build's ability to condi cleanse.

Fair has a lot of regen and condis there, so speed and condi cleanse will be the decisive factors.

Slein's build has less regen, but more condi pressure and cc.

I don't know if the pet skills stay active when Basilisked but, if they do, that could ruin a thief's burst potential.

Biff Rangoon, on 26 January 2015 - 01:33 PM, said:

I don't play thief just have fought against a lot of em. You can instantly tell the difference between a bad thief and a good thief.

I've always meant to level a thief though just don't play enough to learn the class properly.

Biff Rangoon, on 26 January 2015 - 01:33 PM, said:

Well, D/D thieves would be food for any good condi ranger, not only because D/D thief is bad, but because they don't have enough answers to the soft CC.  You're kinda thinking about it backwards; it's the thieves that would be extending the fight more than the ranger.  D/P thieves and, especially, S/D thieves are difficult because they have so many blinks that they're really difficult to CC into your bursts.  Good thieves will draw out the fight and win by attrition, basically, because they can land their damage so much more consistently.  One thing you can do is to chain the dog knockdowns--one to burn the stunbreak, then the second to land some burst--but even though it's easy to forget to watch the dogs, good players will be able to dodge the highly telegraphed dog CC's.  This build isn't going to have the damage to one-shot a thief, anyway, though, even with a perfect combo.  

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I have a really hard time bursting good thieves on my significantly burstier build, so I can't see this build being able to burst hard enough to kill them, but it's certainly tanky enough to stalemate them for a good long time.  In an sPvP context (if this build were even possible), a good Thief wouldn't engage this fight 1v1 unless he was trying to delay a decap, because the ranger would hold the point for far too long before he could wear him down, and from a team rotation standpoint, keeping the thief out of the fight hurts his team more than keeping the ranger occupied hurts the opposing team.  In a WvW roaming setting, though, a skilled thief will wear the ranger down.  

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I have pretty much perma-regen, actually.  I don't have as much Healing Power to back it up, though.  CC is pretty similar; I've got Muddy Terrain (though I've considered dropping it, actually), but he's got a few more cripples, and the rest is the same.  He's a bit tankier, but the gap isn't as big as you'd think, because I've got enough active condition removal to drop Empathic Bond for Bark Skin, which makes for some epic "I've been almost dead for literally minutes at a time" shenanigans.  The biggest difference is that I have staggeringly more damage.  

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They do.

Slein Jinn, on 26 January 2015 - 04:15 PM, said:

Do you have a link to your build somewhere?  I've been meaning to try it out.

In the private section of the [Seek] forums. ;-) Talk to me in-game or on TS, though.  It's not replicable in the build editor at the moment, anyway (hint).

Ah, the drug dealer style of guild recruitment.

"The first build is free..."