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This class still don't have a viable WvW large scale build...AFTER 6 YEARS!


kappa.2036

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So, i'm testing stuff.

  • I'm about to try the interaction beetween Antitoxin runes and Bear Stance. I should be able to remove 3 conditions x second, healing myself for about 1.2k-1.5k hp x second for 6 seconds while being basically immune to conditions for its duration. Also I should be able to cleanse about 45 conditions in total if i share Bear Stance on 5 allies. Popping the heal before a melee engage should cover every condi taken for some seconds.
  • Dolyak Stance is mandatory.
  • Camping Beastmode with Brown Bear grants the best support/survivability among all pets, since you have "Shake it off" when out of beastmode, and Endure Pain (Power damage immunity) and Spiritual Reprieve (AoE Condition Damage Immunity) while in Beastmode.
  • I'm not sure about weapons. Axes with the Honed Axes trait seem to be the best aoe setup. Nothing special tho, sometimes Longbow with Lead the Wind grants more AoE damage, especially in largest open fields. Warhorn #5 is good, #4 is terrible. Greatsword have good damage utilities, but can't be compared to other classes melee-setups.
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@"kappa.2036" said:So, i'm testing stuff.

  • I'm about to try the interaction beetween Antitoxin runes and Bear Stance. I should be able to remove 3 conditions x second, healing myself for about 1.2k-1.5k hp x second for 6 seconds while being basically immune to conditions for its duration. Also I should be able to cleanse about 45 conditions in total if i share Bear Stance on 5 allies. Popping the heal before a melee engage should cover every condi taken for some seconds.
  • Dolyak Stance is mandatory.
  • Camping Beastmode with Brown Bear grants the best support/survivability among all pets, since you have "Shake it off" when out of beastmode, and Endure Pain (Power damage immunity) and Spiritual Reprieve (AoE Condition Damage Immunity) while in Beastmode.
  • I'm not sure about weapons. Axes with the Honed Axes trait seem to be the best aoe setup. Nothing special tho, sometimes Longbow with Lead the Wind grants more AoE damage, especially in largest open fields. Warhorn #5 is good, #4 is terrible. Greatsword have good damage utilities, but can't be compared to other classes melee-setups.

hey, so what did happen?Did it work as you expected? have you been able to find anything remotely of any use in a zerg?after all with the warclaw the roaming definitely is dead.

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@"anduriell.6280" said:hey, so what did happen?Did it work as you expected? have you been able to find anything remotely of any use in a zerg?after all with the warclaw the roaming definitely is dead.

Yeh, i've did some tests. My conclusions:

  • Instead of entering/leaving beastmode to proc traits, camping Beastmode seems the best solution. Pets are completely useless and die in a second, and also pet's F2 have literally ZERO impact in a fight. In conclusion: pick a brown bear, enter beastmode and try to make the best use of Defy pain and Spiritual Reprieve. Other than this, you gain a lot of stats from your pet's archetype and the beastmastery traitline.
  • I almost never used the secondary pet. You can pick Smokescale or Gazelle if you want more AoE damage, or Raven for good mobility and cc with immob, or Blue Moa/White wolf if you feel you need more defensive abilities. Other pets are meh.
  • Greatsword is the best ranger's frontline weapon. Basically you spam Maul every 4 seconds during melee engages. I can always do 6-12k to enemies in front of me. Spam autos when Maul is on cooldown to gain evade till the next Maul is ready.
  • Axes are not that good during engages since 4/5 skills are projectiles and gets denied by Warrior, Firebrand and Scrapper bubbles. Whirling Defense tho is a good skill when used properly, you can get some kills just by standing there while under the effect of stability and damage mitigation skills. Winter's bite and Path of scars are good when enemies don't have reflects up. With my setup Winter's bite is basically a mini aoe condi bomb which inflicts bleeding-chill-weakness-vulnerability-cripple. Longbow is not good because 4/5 skils are projectiles and #5 have a lot less damage than axe#5.
  • Your main job is to share Bear Stance, Dolyak stance, Spiritual Reprieve and some swift/regen/AoE stunbreak, then go full ham with your weapons since you and your allies are basically immune to damage when under the effect of your stances. You can pump out decent damage, personally I got top dps while doing wvw with my guild.
  • This is the quick link to what i'm currently running: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAR3XnE8CN8i1CCOsActgl/A7JN8DaALFhFQAIf8eefvlwqrA-jlCEQBOUJHAOIATUpADVGAv9HIpSQ3pbgfq/8gnAAEuAAAA-w. No Antitoxin runes in the end, Durability runes are better since there are already Scrapper and Firebrands to cleanse conditions. I'm still playing with stats tho. Keep in mind you will have increased stats while in Beastmode.
  • If you feel you have enough stability from your party, you can take One Wolf Pack for more damage.
  • Bring a revenant to your party to gain pulsing Opening Strike. This will boost your dps by A LOT, and also every hit you do should inflict vulnerability and cripple.
  • You don't have much sustain. Your healing skills are also your only condi cleanses/immunities (Bear stance and Spiritual Reprieve), so try to make a good use of double signet of stone and defy pain to avoid damage during engages. If you take a secondary pet with Stout archetype, you should have 15s of damage immunity.
  • Playstyle is similar to warrior: use damage immunities during engages and do much damage as you can, then support allies with resistance, condi cleanses and stability.

META? I don't think. Viable? It seems. I will keep testing tho. Still waiting for a proper zerg weapon.

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I like it! But i would like to ask you more questions about because you are using that build inside an squad already with a good comp in the subgroup (FB, engies cleansing, revs applying constant fury...) . In those cases you could go full zerk and you would not have an issue because of how overperforming the FBs, revs and scourges are doing right now.

But now let me ask you how is your build perfoming in the most likely scenario, where the ranger is not accepted in the squad or it's put in a thieves/rangers subgroup.

  • How is your damage without the constant fury reaplication from the revenant? Do you deal that damage to downeds or to active players?
  • How do you handle constant condition pressure in long encounters?
  • How is the healing? it is noticieable or it's something other players may not see very often (even if you are actually healing them).
  • You pointed out the build doesn't have enough sustain, how do you play it? going with the commander in the clash group, in secondary wave, sideline finishing downed or "backline" (actually middle line) with the necros or something completely different?
  • How do you handle sudden focus into you? And if it's a pewpew focused in your player?
  • You say projectiles aren't efficient at all with the ammount of AoE reflects/blocks are in any zerg fight, how does perform Axe mainhand in your opinion? would you say is satisfying?
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I'm not sure what viability would imply but there are some simple things you can (or should) do to not leave the class as shafted as it has become now.

A. Get rid of the crutch to allow other improvements: Sic 'EmSic 'Em 40% -> 20% affecting both pet and player so a baseline shout ability is not another Soulbeast stance in shout disguise. 20% seems in line with Warrior stuff.

B. Never build new systems ontop of old systems: SpiritsI quite enjoy the new "shroud" mechanics added to Spirits with uptime bleed and additional bleed on skill use. That they still take damage is just stupid though. Let the new system govern the mechanics. That would open up for support utilities and make the Nature Magic tree far more appealing overall.

C. Do not neuter an entire class for a single mode, skillsplit, skillsplit, skillsplit: Grace of the LandIf unique boons in instanced PvE like raids is such a problem, split the trait. Roll back the changes for PvP and WvW and restore the role of a primary offensive support class to the Druid. It won't make it the most coveted class in a 50-man squad but it will give it back a role to play.

D. Elite skills and Grand Master traits should offer something worth thinking about: Wilderness Survival and ElitesThe WS tree is so dull that it makes you fall asleep just looking at it. It's a relic from vanilla and most of the things that were rare then are no longer so. The same goes for many of the elites. The elite glyph is outright embarrassing having such poor return on such short uptime compared to other support options. The spirit could maybe become useful again if spirits were adressed but overall it is pretty telling where almost every build runs the shout and it is not because the shout is crazy good. The shout is the only thing that is not total garbage as things stand.

So, in summary, these are some simple rollback-oriented changes that may not change players' perception of rangers massively in things like large scale WvW but they will go some way to recarve a role for the class in such gameplay. It is the role it has now even, it is just that the role itself is hamstrung by the poor design of existing features and mechanics.

A slightly longer perspective would include looking at the stances that came pre-nerfed and have not been touched since PoF release. They could easily give Soulbeasts a frontline role in WvW should the choose to do something about the balance of the stances. Either keep them short but give them more unique effects or mechanics or keep the mechanics as is but vastly improving uptime. They could also look at traits like the Celestial ones that more or less have to be taken now if you want to use the Druid, leaving no true option to build in any other way and leaving the entire spec broken should you remove them. The stealth on exit for example could really be baseline in order to retain some sort of role without necessarily making the spec overpowered should it get some actual options in it's stead.

Another larger project would be to rework the weapons. I'd say the class has an overabundance of condition or condition-hybrid weapons yet, as most of you know I'm sure, an issue in WvW is a lack of cleaving weapons. They could easily find a more ideal balance of conditions and power over axes, sword and daggers. That would enable them to let both bows work as bows. The shortbow could inherit the current layout of the longbow and the longbow could be redesigned around slower, heavier, multiple-target shots. That would enable one cleaving melee weapon (GS), one cleaving ranged weapon (LB) and an array of less cleaving other weapons. Given the design of the LB mechanics, it could maybe even be left at 900 base so people don't complain about it overshooting the 1200 tool tip (or it could be given 1200).

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It's like A-net read this thread and saw that some people still had some hope, so they decided to do something about that :# .

Upcomming patchnotes:

Ranger

With this update, druids, who gain a new mode and access to additional abilities by slotting the specialization, get the trade-off of their pet becoming a bit weaker than a core ranger's pet, as their focus on celestial magics means less time strengthening the bond with their pets. At the same time, druid glyphs have been reviewed and brought in line with design standards. Glyph of Empowerment has been replaced by the former druid elite skill, Glyph of Unity, as Glyph of Empowerment was deemed too passive. Glyph of Unity's radius has been reduced to a standard radius (a multiple of 60), and its duration has increased. Finally, we've introduced a new elite skill, Glyph of the Stars, which you can read about in its note below.

Nature's Renewal: Added an additional ring visual effect to indicate the range of the toggle skill.Druid: The base attributes of pets have been reduced by 20%.Glyph of Unity: Reduced the radius of this skill from 400 to 360, and increased its duration from 6 seconds to 8 seconds. This skill is no longer an elite skill, and it replaces Glyph of Empowerment.Glyph of Empowerment: This skill has been replaced by Glyph of Unity.

Glyph of Rejuvenation: Increased the healing multiplier across both versions of this skill by 40%. In celestial avatar form, the base healing to the druid and their pet has been increased by 50%. Outside of celestial avatar form, the base healing to allies has been increased by 50%.Glyph of Alignment: Outside of celestial avatar form, this skill no longer inflicts 5 seconds of cripple or 2 stacks of poison for 8 seconds. Instead, it now inflicts 1.5 seconds of immobilization and 3 stacks of bleeding for 8 seconds.Glyph of the Stars: This new elite skill heals, prevents allies from being inflicted with conditions, and removes conditions already on allies at range. In celestial avatar form, it heals, prevents downed allies from losing health while being revived, and grants boons at range.Pack Alpha: This trait now grants its attribute bonus to condition damage in addition to the attributes it previously affected.Poison Master: This trait no longer grants poison on the next attack when swapping pets. It now grants this effect upon the use of a beast skill.

 

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@"anduriell.6280" said:

I like it! But i would like to ask you more questions about because you are using that build inside an squad already with a good comp in the subgroup (FB, engies cleansing, revs applying constant fury...) . In those cases you could go full zerk and you would not have an issue because of how overperforming the FBs, revs and scourges are doing right now.

But now let me ask you how is your build perfoming in the most likely scenario, where the ranger is not accepted in the squad or it's put in a thieves/rangers subgroup.

  • How is your damage without the constant fury reaplication from the revenant? Do you deal that damage to downeds or to active players?
  • How do you handle constant condition pressure in long encounters?
  • How is the healing? it is noticieable or it's something other players may not see very often (even if you are actually healing them).
  • You pointed out the build doesn't have enough sustain, how do you play it? going with the commander in the clash group, in secondary wave, sideline finishing downed or "backline" (actually middle line) with the necros or something completely different?
  • How do you handle sudden focus into you? And if it's a pewpew focused in your player?
  • You say projectiles aren't efficient at all with the ammount of AoE reflects/blocks are in any zerg fight, how does perform Axe mainhand in your opinion? would you say is satisfying?
  • I deal good damage. When you disable a foe you gain fury. Signets grants fury. Using a beast skill grants fury. Your elite skill grants fury. You should be able to refresh your Opening Strike when needed, but yeah, having classes that can pulse Fury near you is even better. I like to play a bit more tanky, but you can gear yourself more offensive if you want. I can do that damage to active players, in general, a 6k Maul crit on a Firebrand Minstrel is considered normal. Depends on your might stacks and if you have Opening Strike up.
  • You should have 6 seconds of pulsing condition cleanse and 4+ seconds of resistance. Your brown bear also cleanse 2 conditions. That's enough for me, but you can also take a Superior Sigil of Cleansing (3 condition removed on weapon swap) instead of Hydromancy or Bloodlust. Greatsword autos and #4 works well to prevent random conditions from being applied to you.
  • You only AoE healing skill is Spiritual Reprieve, which heals for about 4k aoe. You dont have other forms of sustain except your healing skill. BUT you have a lot of damage immunities so think about this: try to NOT take damage with those skills and your dodges, instead of being bombed and then try to heal. Also healing is not your main role, you are dps, like warriors (they also don't have much healing).
  • Generally, i stay in the frontline just a little behind guardians. 90% of the times i push with them, but occasionaly i position myself in the midline if i have to wait for some cooldowns. From there you can still pressure enemies with your axe or supporting allies with stab/resistance.
  • You have axe #5 to reflect those projectiles and 3 damage immunities. One of them is automatically procs when you reach 50% health.
  • I would love a rework of axe mainhand. Splitblade should be an heavy melee attack (maybe with a small leap?). Ricochet should bounce more times. Other than this, i actually like the weapon. Winter's Bite AoE is nasty when it hits.
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@subversiontwo.7501 said:It's like A-net read this thread and saw that some people still had some hope, so they decided to do something about that :# .

Upcomming patchnotes:

Ranger

With this update, druids, who gain a new mode and access to additional abilities by slotting the specialization, get the trade-off of their pet becoming a bit weaker than a core ranger's pet, as their focus on celestial magics means less time strengthening the bond with their pets. At the same time, druid glyphs have been reviewed and brought in line with design standards. Glyph of Empowerment has been replaced by the former druid elite skill, Glyph of Unity, as Glyph of Empowerment was deemed too passive. Glyph of Unity's radius has been reduced to a standard radius (a multiple of 60), and its duration has increased. Finally, we've introduced a new elite skill, Glyph of the Stars, which you can read about in its note below.

Nature's Renewal: Added an additional ring visual effect to indicate the range of the toggle skill.Druid: The base attributes of pets have been reduced by 20%.Glyph of Unity: Reduced the radius of this skill from 400 to 360, and increased its duration from 6 seconds to 8 seconds. This skill is no longer an elite skill, and it replaces Glyph of Empowerment.Glyph of Empowerment: This skill has been replaced by Glyph of Unity.

Glyph of Rejuvenation: Increased the healing multiplier across both versions of this skill by 40%. In celestial avatar form, the base healing to the druid and their pet has been increased by 50%. Outside of celestial avatar form, the base healing to allies has been increased by 50%.Glyph of Alignment: Outside of celestial avatar form, this skill no longer inflicts 5 seconds of cripple or 2 stacks of poison for 8 seconds. Instead, it now inflicts 1.5 seconds of immobilization and 3 stacks of bleeding for 8 seconds.Glyph of the Stars: This new elite skill heals, prevents allies from being inflicted with conditions, and removes conditions already on allies at range. In celestial avatar form, it heals, prevents downed allies from losing health while being revived, and grants boons at range.Pack Alpha: This trait now grants its attribute bonus to condition damage in addition to the attributes it previously affected.Poison Master: This trait no longer grants poison on the next attack when swapping pets. It now grants this effect upon the use of a beast skill.

 

A support with zero stability in wvw = bad support.

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@kappa.2036 said:

@subversiontwo.7501 said:It's like A-net read this thread and saw that some people still had some hope, so they decided to do something about that :# .

Upcomming patchnotes:

Ranger

With this update, druids, who gain a new mode and access to additional abilities by slotting the specialization, get the trade-off of their pet becoming a bit weaker than a core ranger's pet, as their focus on celestial magics means less time strengthening the bond with their pets. At the same time, druid glyphs have been reviewed and brought in line with design standards. Glyph of Empowerment has been replaced by the former druid elite skill, Glyph of Unity, as Glyph of Empowerment was deemed too passive. Glyph of Unity's radius has been reduced to a standard radius (a multiple of 60), and its duration has increased. Finally, we've introduced a new elite skill, Glyph of the Stars, which you can read about in its note below.

Nature's Renewal: Added an additional ring visual effect to indicate the range of the toggle skill.Druid: The base attributes of pets have been
reduced by 20%
.Glyph of Unity:
Reduced the radius
of this skill from 400 to 360, and increased its duration from 6 seconds to 8 seconds. This skill is no longer an elite skill, and it replaces Glyph of Empowerment.
Glyph of Empowerment: This skill has been replaced
by Glyph of Unity.

Glyph of Rejuvenation: Increased the healing multiplier across both versions of this skill by 40%. In celestial avatar form, the base healing to the druid and their pet has been increased by 50%. Outside of celestial avatar form, the base healing to allies has been increased by 50%.Glyph of Alignment: Outside of celestial avatar form, this skill no longer inflicts 5 seconds of cripple or 2 stacks of poison for 8 seconds. Instead, it now inflicts 1.5 seconds of immobilization and 3 stacks of bleeding for 8 seconds.Glyph of the Stars: This new elite skill heals, prevents allies from being inflicted with conditions, and removes conditions already on allies at range. In celestial avatar form, it heals, prevents downed allies from losing health while being revived, and grants boons at range.Pack Alpha: This trait now grants its attribute bonus to condition damage in addition to the attributes it previously affected.Poison Master: This trait no longer grants poison on the next attack when swapping pets. It now grants this effect upon the use of a beast skill.

 

A support with zero stability in wvw = bad support.Well, yes, that is sort of my point. At least as far as being support in a squad or following a tag goes. It has a very small niche as support in focus-party types of approaches but those parties surely do not need additional subpar and taxing heals or condition cleanses, they want the damage buffs that keeps getting slashed. Especially considering the healing nerfs that were made to the spec in the past, them turning around now and taking a healer/defensive support perspective on it (and snuffing out the last offensive appeal in it) just suggests that they have no idea where to take the class or spec. It is just odd, indecisive behaviour where they first make it subpar in certain aspects of the role and then go and change some of that back in other, less effective, ways.

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Kappa's comment are on the money. I posted this elsewhere, quoting cause it's also relevant here.

don't listen to people who say rangers are bad at zerging, they are the kind of players who don't really understand the game and just get run over by better groups (and then complain about how unfair it is).

Frontline stanceshare soulbeast with axe/axe + greatsword is great at zerging. I have hours of footage where I routinely out-damage guild scourges/revs in tweaked meta builds. I have 1-2 hit so many people for 10-17K with axe #3 i don't even bother to record it anymore. The build i use: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAR3XnE8CNsgN8C2CCs8il9AbpJEASAPxhjQFIf9+evvlIRvA-jVCBQBaUZWe0NoQ1fAwDBINKBLy+DB4IAwgLAgXUaEA4A48zz8mHc+5nf+5nXzP/8zP/8zP/8zLFQELjA-w (enable beastmode)

Stanceshare SB brings:

  • the best group stab in game, because it provides full soft CC immunity (dolyak stance)
  • some of the best group condi clear in game (bear stance)
  • multiple pulls, immobilises and leaps
  • group stunbreak (protect me)
  • unique dmg buff that increases scourge dmg by ~16% (stance elite)
  • the highest scaling AOE dmg skill in game, axe #5

so yeah, ignore the naysayers, they are clueless.

Mainhand axe is not bad but the lack of a skill that doesn't require a target holds it back a bit. If axe #2 (splitblade) could be used without a target to cause AOE damage in a 900range cone (as it does when you do have a target), axe/axe + GS would be a really solid WVW set.

I still firmly think it's viable now but it definitely takes more skill to use than hammer rev/faceroll scourge for approx the same payoff.

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@anduriell.6280 said:So with the new balance changes... Do you think druid will have an spot with the glyph of stars?Is there anything in it that would suggest to you that it can?

Are people dying to condition bombs or do they mere serve as rips and weakeners? Are they dying to getting stab ripped and being forced to eat all the damage comming their way if they have no immunity or break? Is the Druid in any other way not clunky or built around staying on a tag? Or is the Druid built around playing at the fringes and supporting other classes that do the same? Are those classes in need of a condition damage immunity because classes at fringe positions are extra susceptible to condition damage? Are those classes more interested in that condition immunity than they are in getting damage bonuses to their Coalescences, Meteor showers or Vaults? In short, the Druid is likely to have less of a spot in anything now since this does not make them more appealing in squads and less appealing in self-governing parties.

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@anduriell.6280 said:So with the new balance changes... Do you think druid will have an spot with the glyph of stars?

Another point is : Will the no XP and no Loot attribution still be an issue?

We don't know how powerful Glyph of The Stars is yet but seeing that they gutted the pet and empowerment glyph to cement the spec as a be all end all healer, it had better be a suitably strong 10 man heal skill. Assuming it is that, yeah, druid will have a place as a healer and boon bot in a WvW squad.

Imagine giving 10 people Troll Unguent tier healing.

! But it remains to be seen. I'm just dreaming out loud.

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