[Build] The Condition-Immune Ranger

Not exactly a build post per say, more of a combo of one trait and two pieces of gear that you can slot into most other build archetypes (condi soulbeast, healer druid or what-have-you) in order to achieve near immunity (and occasionally true immunity*) to conditions, both damaging and debilitating.

Build Skeleton http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQBIATAaCA-jRgRAAw+DiCovA-e

Rather than attempting to achieve permanent resistance uptime (which I don't think is possible on a ranger without external support) the idea is to reduce the duration of incoming conditions to as close to zero as possible, and then use passive regeneration effects to mitigate any condition damage that gets through. The elements of the combo are Empathic Bond (-50% condition duration on you), runes that reduce condition durations (strongest are Runes of Melandru at -25% duration) and a foodstuff that reduces condition duration (Sweet Bean Bun is the strongest at -20%, or Saffron Bread for builds that don't use expertise). These three elements stack for a total of -95% incoming condition duration. Empathic Bond is a Wilderness Survival trait, which means that included in the package is Rugged Growth, a strong passive heal that scales properly with healing power as long as it is kept fed with protection. At this point the build can be geared as either as a druid or as a soulbeast, for power and/or condition, DPS and/or tanky.

I suspect that in a non-PvE scenario against a foe with +100% condition duration these bonuses and penalties will cancel each other out, so you will still have to deal with 105% duration condition stacks, but this will need further testing. In general this setup needs testing - only figured out a dye combo for my testing set (apothecary gear on a power build, oh yeah!) tonight.

*When the duration a condition stack fails to exceed a certain minimum duration it seems not to call the function that applies fractional condition damage, at least according to the tactical log but not always according to the visuals. See fractal screenshot - there are no condition damage stacks displayed in the log but a 30 torment damage stack is displayed on the screen.Fractal screenshot

LW screenshot - note how the minimal damage of the conditions is offset by the healing from regeneration and Rugged Growth, to the point that only one of these effects is usually sufficient.