Looking for Suggestions for a Ranger build without having HoT

Hello everybody,

thing is that i ended my wow career after a good while more than a decade and strated to look for something else to play - well somehow GW2 eluded me up until now. I now finally got around to buy me PoF but not HoT and leveled to 80 (holy cow leveling is crazy fast here :P ) --> now whereever i read i get told to have HoT or i will not be able to play a proper Ranger (Condi Soulbeast i assume) -----> now i wonder if there is another way to go because i actually dont want to buy the other expansion :)

I would be really glad if somebody could help me deciding ;)

Thanks in advance

Yinmin

If it is PVE you are focusing on, the top meta dps build doesn't require anything from the HOT expansion.
https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Soulbeast_-_Condition_Stance_Share

For WvW , also no HOT is needed.https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Soulbeast_-_Frontline_Soulbeast

For PVP you can go same build as WvW or try :https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Ranger_-_Melee_Burst_Beast - (replace smokescale with rock gazelle)Or -https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Ranger_-_Power_Survival (core ranger build, no changes are needed).

Enjoy.

HoT has mainly the armor stat you desire for condi dps, because vipers gear is restricted to HoT (correct me if i am wrong, i am not 100% sure).There is a possibility to go full on dmg with soulbeast without HoT and you wont have any issues with dmg (but you wont hit the benchmark probably).If you want to play druid you have to Buy HoT though.Power soulbeast is doing fine and you wont need HoT for pure raw dps gear.

What is your game mode, all will just point at meta and say play that and with pve you kind of need to because they are a bunch of meta snobs. If its wvw or pvp you want to get into then thats a different story.

To step away from the people who keep spouting "Meta". As long as you have Soulbeast you're going to be able to hit hard enough where most people wont care (Or shouldn't care) in Fractals or dungeons. Using the build Snowcrows has posted for their Condi Soulbeast Benchmarks and swapping out the Viper's gear for Grieving your numbers will be comparable. You will have the burst damage, just lose some of the sustain that Viper's offers. You can also use Sinister's (Numbers will be lower all around with sinisters, but not bad enough that you'll be useless). Either way, Sinister's or Grieving the damage will be higher than any Power build for Ranger. Go Condi Soulbeast with Grieving gear and call it a day.

@"Vyriis.6258" said:To step away from the people who keep spouting "Meta". As long as you have Soulbeast you're going to be able to hit hard enough where most people wont care (Or shouldn't care) in Fractals or dungeons. Using the build Snowcrows has posted for their Condi Soulbeast Benchmarks and swapping out the Viper's gear for Grieving your numbers will be comparable. You will have the burst damage, just lose some of the sustain that Viper's offers. You can also use Sinister's (Numbers will be lower all around with sinisters, but not bad enough that you'll be useless). Either way, Sinister's or Grieving the damage will be higher than any Power build for Ranger. Go Condi Soulbeast with Grieving gear and call it a day.

In regards ti that you can use nightmare runes (x4) and 2 trapper runes for nice condi duration bonus. It will give your sustain dmg some bonus.

@"InsaneQR.7412" said:In regards ti that you can use nightmare runes (x4) and 2 trapper runes for nice condi duration bonus. It will give your sustain dmg some bonus.

There's no "can use" about it. You "have to use" Nightmare + Trapper runes in order for Condi Ranger to work. Hard to ignore that flat 25% duration. Thus why I pointed to Snowcrows Benchmark (and added to just swap Viper's for Grieving). Same build and rotation outside of the stats (https://snowcrows.com/raids/ranger/). The reason I pointed out the lose to sustain in the first place: Regardless how you look at it you're just not going to have the same sustain without Viper's. However, Grieving offers a better burst. So it's not really a huge loss if you're using it anywhere outside of Raids (Open world, Fractals, Dungeons).