New Soulbeast player. Need healing help!

[iBhoot.4051]

Hello,

I have been a Guardian main. First Marauder DPS and then Firebrand(FB) with Trailblazer/Dire setup. Decided to try a new profession and went with ranger. Gear is not an issue. My issue is that I am finding the that Ranger SLB does not have the same amount of heals as FB.Can someone tell me how I can increase my healing ability? With FB, I have the F2 and F3 that give me protection, regen heals in addition to this I have access to additional regen skills if I need them. Please note, this not about vitality levels or toughness. This is about being heal yourself when doing solo bosses, etc. I am obviously missing a step here, so please provide detailed responses because I really like the SLB condi over FB due to the huge dps burst into condi dps.SLB gear, have Viper only all (Fractals), Trailblazer/Dire (PVE) and Mara (PVE DPS) full ascended set of everything. Stopped using the DPS variant as its so weak compared to condi.

[bigo.9037]

wilderness survival gives you 150hp/sec while you have protection, protection on dodge trolls urgent heal skill and we heal as one have the best amount of healing. condi cleanse also means removing poison to prevent the heal decrease. but ranger is different playstyle, you’re not supposed to face tank dmg unless you have Dolyak stance on.

[iBhoot.4051]

I was using axe-torch + dagger+axe. Going to switch to shortbow-dagger+axe for more range. Even with 19k vit and 2500 toughness, getting downed extremely quickly. Same scenario and FBs condi damage absoltely hammers mobs with sustained 25K dps on arcdps and dish out a ton of damage. Will practice so more. Still feel SLB or ranger has extremely weak heal abilities.

[Zuras.5394]

Hi, You could try this build.....

[mizaru.1385]

@"Zuras.5394" said:Hi, You could try this build.....

This ^

Just use Hizen's build and solo everything

[voltaicbore.8012]

I second (third?) the suggestion of trying Hizen's build if you're trying to solo stuff. Basically any build that uses a few Command skills + the Beastmastery trait Resounding Timbre gives you infinite regen and swiftness uptime, which might better approximate what you were doing on guardian. The Hizen build linked above of course includes this. Hizen in general has a thing for traits that convert Toughness into more damage, which results in his builds being great on both the survival and damage aspects if played right. Also, since that Toughness-into-damage is always a passive trait, that makes his builds that much easier to manage.

I personally run a more defensively oriented Trailblazer build that I first made for WvW roaming. Shortbow offers a lot of disruption/CC utility, and I don't really enjoy not running shortbow on condi ranger. I didn't fill in infusion slots and such, but you get the idea. Between the all-Trailblazer stats and merging with the spider pet (which gives you extra HP), you're going to survive the vast majority of what comes your way in terms of incoming power and condition damage. This allows for the selection of slightly more offensively oriented traits and utilities.

Like the Hizen build, this leans very heavily into high and constant application of poison damage to trigger the life-siphon-on-poison trait in the soulbeast line. Unlike the Hizen build, this doesn't have Commands + Resounding Timbre, so you lose the perma regen. However, it retains the Rugged Growth passive regen from the Wilderness Survival line, and the Bear Stance heal (when traited) is a very handy condition cleanse.

I'm constantly making small changes depending on what I run into. For most PvE solo purposes, I actually drop Leader of the Pack in favor of Oppressive Superiority, and sometimes I even drop Live Fast (and thereby losing a nice source of quickness + fury) in favor of Unstoppable Union if I feel the need to get more protection and mobility-preservation.

You can also switch the Trapper Runes for Scavenger Runes. While the stealth from Trapper detargets you and the superspeed allows for great repositioning, Scavenger synergizes well with the extra HP you'll be running and boosts your poison damage - always a welcome element of this build. I prefer Trapper because I used to almost exclusively play tanks in trinity MMOs, and am obsessed with the ability to reposition effectively, and also because I run 2 traps along with the trap trait in this build.

Defensively speaking though, the primary way I get sustain out of this build is actually with chaining dodges on the sword/dagger set. It sucks that the old sword 3 dodge-on-demand is now hidden behind the first stage of sword 2, but it's easy enough to learn how to pre-emptively use sword 2's first ability to queue up the dodge hidden behind it. Also, if you mess that up and your dodge goes on cd before you can use it, you can use sword 3 when enemies are in melee to disengage backwards and refresh sword 2 for another try. Dagger 4 has always been a nice, relatively short cd dodge-on-demand, so I reserve that for when sword 2 and 3 fall through and I just want to avoid a big hit. All of this can be done without burning a single normal dodge, and Wilderness Survival gives you +25% perma endurance regen anyways. Also note that the sword 2 dodge and dagger 4 dodge both apply poison on strike, which of course procs the life siphon from Predator's Cunning.

The Flame Trap slot is flexible for me. I tend to run Flame Trap simply because it's hard to outperform the burning condition, but it only really works if you're confident you can root your target into eating all or most of the trap's pulses. That's where the spider's merged F3 pull ability shines, as I can yank most escape attempts right back into the center of the trap, while also giving myself quickness and fury. I run the Spike Trap or Frost Trap in WvW if I run into an enemy roamer more often who I really need to lock down in order to kill, and in PvE if I need yet another margin of safety I run the Protect Me command for an extra stunbreak, protection, and barrier. It's defensive overkill, really.

As for the elite, I run Entangle in WvW or xPvP situations, again because of the importance of rooting targets into my traps and spider-merge-F2 poison field. In PvE I'm often going with Strength of the Pack for more stability and might, or with One Wolf Pack if I'm confident I can keep enough quickness uptime and multi-hits to make it worth it. Entangle also works in PvE as well, if you want to root a number of targets to either keep them off you for a bit, or if you want to make sure they stay in your traps and die. In PvE though I would recommend using spider merge F3 (Prelude Lash) to gather up mobs into a trap.

Finally, I generally don't run this build in group content. When i do, it's only for when I am carrying someone and we're duo-ing what should be done normally by a group of 4 or 5. It has enough area damage to steadily wear down packs of mobs, and of course is loaded with enough defense to make almost any PvE activity extremely safe.

Sorry for the rambling wall of text - it's late, and I kinda lost track of what I was saying lol. Hope this gives you some ideas to solve your survivability problem. Consider it a starting point to draw some survival ideas from; as-is, this build probably doesn't do nearly as much damage as you'd like. To get anywhere near the right arcdps numbers for damage output, you'll likely have to run torch and the Quick Draw trait to get more access to burning.

[Dadnir.5038]

You can always use a "supportive" pet and get spiritual reprieve as a second heal if you miss guardian's F2. You can even have "3" heal by taking Jacaranda or 2 heal and an power invul with brown bear.

I'm surprised nobody even suggested to use a supportive pet...

[Gotejjeken.1267]

Druid is the healing spec for ranger. Condi druid works really well in WvW, I'd imagine it would work in PvE too and you get crazy amounts of healing.

With SLB, yeah you can take a supportive pet but you won't (and shouldn't) be healing like a Guardian.