sPvP Ranger Build

While I'm not 100% sure they don't function together, I didn't notice any increase in bleed procs when I tried double Earth sigils.

I'm fairly sure the sigil only affects skills given by that weapon, for example if you had an axe and a dagger with Earth sigil on axe, you would cause bleeds with skills 1-3 but not with 4 and 5

I've tested that too Yski, and the sigil effects are independent of which weapon they're on. I used Air and Fire sigils on my ranger's axe + warhorn & spammed the 1 skill and got both lightning and fire procs.

Really? I hadn't tested anything, I just thought that would be how it works. Good to know.

Some of the aspects of this made their way into my short-med range ranger with his traps, thanks for the thoughts :)

@sylvinstar: I really can't see giving up the earth sigil on the shortbow with its bleeds contribution for more corruptions removal. It's a matter of going further into being impossible to kill for sure, but you're losing so much offense contribution it doesn't seem a good bang-for-your-buck trade. Especially with the cooldown on the condition removal and not on the bleed proc. I figure you're over 60% crit chance on mean (average) and 60% chance to apply, so 36% chance per attack for either to proc and for earth gain a 5sec bleed vs the same chance to remove a condition limited to at least 10secs, which means only 36% chance for each time after that cooldown wears off and could be 1-3 seconds longer each time (on average).

I used sword and dagger less and less last night, so the shortbow might make an appearence for me ;)

I was having some trouble with spike melee damage last night, from being immobilised to sit in big warrior/ele attacks, and thieves making shadowstep-like moves and backstabbing in the blink of an eye and it dealing a hefty amount regardless of having the high toughness, it was these points that not having a stun or daze, and not having an escape for immobilise, was starting to hurt me, and I think the thieves were using weapon swap auto-crits so I may need to learn the buff icon that they must get when they switch for it, so I can get a dodge in at that point. For both I guess the shortbow comes in better than the evade-based mitigation of sword+dagger.

I still think I'd recommend the swapping to torch instead of horn where you can going into combat for all the people using the build you guys are talking about. You lose the hawks (which I think depend on power instead of condition damage, despite being bleed-like?) and the constant use of the horn, but gain a 6sec burn for a burst-like (for a conditions build, burning is roughly 6 bleeds in power, but stacks duration only) ~3.5k damage over 6 seconds and bonfire for placing a deceptive (the graphic isn't too obvious as to what it is) and decent sized fire field around you for 8secs to burn incoming attackers and allow for self and group combos which will apply burning also if they proc (20% for most ranged, including each bounce of an axe throw I think, but shortbow 3, 4 and 5 are all 100%). When out of combat you can open the hero tab and very conveniently swap to horn for use for either swiftness getting from A to B, or the other buffs right before combat. The cooldown for which will tick behind the scenes when you switch away from the horn and if you switch back before it's back up it'll still be ticking, but never prevent you swapping.

As for spike trap (or any other trap for that matter) without being built into traits for traps; well I'm not sure I'd recommend it. It makes it viable that you can target them and they're larger (the pulsing nature of them limits how many pulses an enemy will take whilst moving around unless they're big areas) and the effects last twice as long when traited to it, but without those trait effects it's mostly for the additional cripple I guess. Muddy terrain might work better even though it's an active use (need to put it down whilst fighting). It's survival (shorter cd trait possibly in the build, because sharpening stone is also) and has the huge benefits of an immobilise aspect and 900m range whilst still providing the cripple, for the cost of the lacking bleedx3 and untraited it's a 5sec longer cd (traited it's shorter by 1sec).

The horn part: The hawks attack proc'ing bleeds I hadn't considered at all and puts it in a whole other world to how I was writing it off. 16 attacks timed after getting fury+might; at 77% chance to crit; then 60% to apply;  giving 46.2% chance per attack to bleed.  ~7.4 average number of bleed stacks. That's close to the torch throw burn, with shorter duration bleeds but more damage per second and of course the attacks in the first place. The torch throw is a shorter cd at 15secs vs 25secs though, so the difference sums up as:

• in-combat uses of the fury+might+swiftness buff (the out of combat use of this when using torch is kinda neat, even if the hero panel takes up your whole window whilst doing it)
• hawks vs torch throw (hawks has longer cd but a bit more damage)
• fire field for all allies willing to position to benefit from it on the torch, and I think technically you could use the torch bonfire fire field out of combat just as I have been using the horn buff

The immobilisation and focusing drops from the picture as you shift from short-mid range to just mid-long at a guess, traps and a melee weapon set were condusive to the short-range play and point control (I could feel the large impact I was making), but I just couldn't hang at times, even with near-max toughness. I was pursuing more damage and point control/aoe instead of sustainability of build.

So I'll at the least try the shortbow and regen components of the build you're using, and keep the traps build I was playing in my back pocket for if I ever need to play a point control role for my team (including torch at times maybe), but I'll almost definitely use the mud instead of spike trap for when I use the shortbow, as the 900m range and additional immobilise make more sense to me than an 'at your feet' bleed addition.

Bleeding according to gw2wiki (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bleeding) : 2.5 + 0.5 * Level + 0.05 * Condition Damage per stack per second ... need to ignore what the tooltips of the builders say as all of them are I think taken from tooltip screenshots and, other than the timers mod on the one we're using,  they don't actually seem to take into account your stats and level, much like the damage components... I 'think'. So: 2.5 + 0.5 * 80 + 0.05 * 1223 = 2.5 + 40 + 61.15 = 103.65 per bleed stack per second from you, and your pet is different. Might raises condition damage by 35 per stack and so 1.75 to each bleed stack and for each bleed pulse per stack of might. That raises the question as to whether conditions use the condition damage of the toon at application or at the time of the pulse?.. And even what crit chance is used if you use a sustained attack like hawks and change your crit chance (fury or weapon/sigil swap) after?

Dropping the traps from a build makes so many more options interesting: muddy terrain at 24secs (traited) with 20sec duration and I think a nice big radius at 900m range; lightning reflexes for a big increase to ability to move away from melee (the skill's own fallback move, it breaks stun! and the long vigour to boot) that benefits from survival traiting; and rampage as one for an elite skill on short cd (Lysa runes meaning it removes all corruptions and gives all boons even using it, which is part of what is useful about nature spirit) so you end up with all boons for 5secs (Lysa runes again), fury and swiftness for an additional 20 and might stacking on both you and your pet as you each attack.

Conditions removal is a bit of a pain, that the ranger class specifically only has the means to remove them passively here and there, and largely out of the players control for timing, makes me question whether trying to is playing too far away from it's strengths. The strengths of the build are in using a large proportion of condition damage to make kills on anyone equally (particularly useful on targets with high armour/toughness), whilst being a pita to kill because of distance, mobility and having sufficient control to put them off. It works best in grouping, so I figure it might be time to make a friend who looks after your conditions for you if you get too many. I'm just trying to figure out how I can bring in meaningful poison use, as the impact it has on healing is one of the aspects that attracted me to ranger (one of 3? classes that use it) and the duration of 2 on shortbow isn't great.

The quickening options don't really seem to pack enough benefit unless you're bringing control down on someone and want to land as much as you can whilst they're out of action, possibly popping it just before, otherwise the loss of being able to receive healing (including regeneration) is nasty on the ranger variation.

Figured as much for muddy terrain, how big is the area? I didn't get into the hour today else I'd probably have been checking it myself.

And regarding rampage as one, my favourite thought was the possibility of using it to stack up might for both self and pet and then near the end; use the hawks, sharpening stone and f2 lynx bleeds at once on a person. The stacks of might would each be adding 1.75 damage per pulse to each bleed stack for both yours and your pets bleeds and of course adding much-lacking power to the build and making the high crit rate more valuable. The issue is timing it all, but I have theories as to how it could all be timed especially coming out of base at the start of a game. Just wont put them in words without a chance to test.

The range, the radius and it's duration for muddy. It has 20sec duration vs trap having ... well, I don't know exactly how long it lasts once triggered :D but it's more time that spike I'm sure.

I'm actually wondering about sigil of superior strength for the 2nd sigil in the axe+warhorn pair because, whilst it's another offensive tweak and the defense in my thinking is dwindling, it makes for a an average of 20% chance pet hit (thinking axe bouncing building up stacks of it, average considers 67% crit because fury is up half the time) to give the 10sec might that seemingly stacks without cd. Might seems to me to be the answer to fleshing-out both the power and condition damage, of which the power is very low in the build and so limits the direct damage that the crits would bring in by quite a bit, and also of course boosting condition damage.

Where I'm at:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fMIQNBHhVakoqyuxSzi1OQ0ZwJzzecIDVI/hRlxG...

It isn't :( but ranger faces the issue that it's not inclined toward full condition builds without some direct damage. We're working a build area that makes the most of that tbh already with the crit+bleeds synergy, but still it's hard to make it entirely simple.

And as for single-target diminishing the might stacking; it'll be lower indeed, but I'm really interested in group situation anyway because in 1v1 situations it'll be down to a burst of bleeds (hit) and run play. In group situations it makes it harder to retain the target and so I want to be ramping up more to pack more of a punch and hopefully burst or help to burst a target down. 

The math of it for facing 1 player looks like:

With fury:  crit chance*chance to apply on crit*duration of the might when it applies = 0.77*0.3*11.5 = 2.66 stacks sustained on average : assuming 1 attack per second (disregarding splitblade maybe hitting up to 5 times at point blank).

Without fury:  crit chance*chance to apply on crit*duration of the might when it applies = 0.57*0.3*11.5 = 1.97 stacks sustained on average : assuming 1 attack per second (disregarding splitblade maybe hitting up to 5 times at point blank).

In aoe situations of course it rises, up to 3x as many if hitting 3 targets on the bounces. And actually, 1v1 doesn't always mean 1 target thankfully; mesmer illusions, necro minions, engineer turrets, ranger pet+spirits, guardian spirit weapons and the occassional elite skill summon.

Rampage as one does give a bit of a better result of course ^.^ as you end up with as many stacks as the duration is (with the +15% boon duration) on top of how many you'd have anyway, and far more on your pet.

You know, having read all this in-depth analysis on ranger you people have here, I'm really starting to feel like playing one.

I have to play thief and necro as soon as I can, it would be a crime not to have several copies of me running around, so I'll need a mesmer  and with all the mobility and flashy things eles have I'll have to make one of them too. Now once I make a ranger as well I'll be out of slots. If this keeps up I'll end up buying more character slots at launch 

Yep on the fast condition ramping, though critically I'm actually looking at 1 smaller burst of them going into fights (use of sharpening stone possibly occuring prior to the combat)  and then a bigger one often further in when possibly their active corruption removal options have gone and I've ramped up a little might to assist. I'm still torn on the might-giving sigil as the magnitude of the benefit from the buff varies so much and with high dodge rate I'm already angling toward group vs group fights. Whilst most higher level matches (all conquest for now of course) will turn into mass pushes by the team with only 1 capture point and the defending team attempting to anticipate and control that push; lacking the flexibility to fight 1v1 doesn't sit 'too' well. I think whatever I 'do' choose will be an offensive sigil option and maybe even just +5% crit.

And for Yski: actually this is really only one angle on ranger, and not really the normal one :) this is the ranger as a ranged conditions build, though I did touch upon conditions in the melee with traps talk. The norm for ranger would really be direct damage with vit packed instead of toughness (the stats go hand in hand that way). 

I can, I fought a spirit ranger during BWE1 and his spirits gave him so much regen he actually out-healed my damage. They could've changed it ofc, but all the other skills that affect nearby allies work the same way, so I doubt it.

Spirits aren't what out-healed your dps sorry, the only healing spirit is the elite.

But anyway; yes they work for allies, but they're stationary unless you trait hard into a non-dps trait line. So a point buffing tool until you go to the extreme and become a 5-companion profession (4 most of the time, but 5 with the elite up). Possibly the most valid multi-companion build now I think about it, though through buffing instead of dealing direct damage.