Aaron Forestman.4758

1: Certainly. Soulbeast dps is solid in almost all fights in both raids and fractals. If you're doing fractal CMs though, firebrand works much better.

2: Somewhat. Firebrand is greatly preferred in fractals, while both firebrand and druid have their place in different raid comps.

3: That depends on your playstyle and how much you want to heal and dps. You need two sets of gear to run both a dps build and a healing build anyway, so my recommendation would be to put healing gear on your guardian and dps gear on your ranger since you said the dragonhunter dps was boring you.

Take whatever you want in dungeons, they're old content so they're not balanced to elite specs at all. Druid isn't meta in fractals, so you won't usually see them in CM groups, but for regular t4s they work fine. You can run it in open world, but pretty much only if you want to carry others in meta events. Open world druid is just slowing things down for yourself when you could be doing much more damage on soulbeast.

As with almost all ranged attacks in this game, you do have to be facing the enemy to attack them. It works that way by design, so it will never be "fixed".

In case anyone else needs some tips here, these are the things that helped my group shave unnecessary time off:

* In the intro jumping section, grab your first two charges and kill the first air elemental. Grab the charges that spawn after that to cap it out and ignore the two subsequent air elementals. Stability helps there so they can't fling you around.

* On the air boss, you can meet a dps check to avoid the red circles spawning on you during the post-33% burn phase.

* > @"Kameko.8314" said:

>be sure to kill vet eles only on fire, don't need to kill the others

* On the fire boss, break quick and dps hard. The 33% meteors should be placed close to the boss so you're not wasting time running back for the final burn.

* When running past water elementals, stack stability and projectile blocks. You can all gg as soon as one person gets past all of them, but respawn carefully. There will be a couple elementals right at the respawn point.

* For final boss: you can dps after the meteors strike on the fire phase -- it's a bit risky but can get you 5-10% bonus damage. In the air jump phase, grab your three charges and DON'T GET THE CLOUD RIGHT ABOVE YOU. Rotate clockwise or counter-clockwise and get the cloud there, then rotate again, grab charges, and get the cloud there. This is also how to get the 10 second achievement there.

When they give explicit schedules like this, it's a safe bet that they'll follow through. Hooray for new fractal content!!

> @"Tyrick.9805" said:

> So I stopped playing maybe 1,5 year ago and I remember before I stopped I created an alt ranger that I wanted to level but never did.

> I always liked the open world greatsword build, but now that I reinstalled the game and logged in to my ranger, I wanted to check that build to be sure what is going on.

> On the Metabattle website I couldn't find any builds with greatsword.

>

> Did something happen or I just miss something?

> What other possibilities I have for a tanky easy to pickup build?

>

> Thank you in advance!

In general it's best to avoid metabattle. Those builds are far from ideal and often behind on updates. Check this out for a greatsword build, it's still an ideal weapon for high damage and mobility: https://snowcrows.com/raids/builds/ranger/soulbeast/power/

I've seen your average WvW build. Drop by the Aerodrome sometime and we PvE'ers will happily show you what actual damage is like ;)

> @"Strider.7849" said:

> My experience (WvW and all forms of PvE) least seen classes have been Mesmer in WvW and (unlike others I have seen and fought tons of warriors) and in PvE (instanced fractals) believe it or not it's been guardians. In open world/dungeons it's been thief.

If guardians are your least seen class in fractals, you're missing out on meta groups entirely. HB/QB is in practically every group that knows what they're doing.

Condi soulbeast can work just fine for open world, and it's fun to put a bunch of condis on enemies and let them die as you walk away. Condi in general is a bad idea in fractals though, so if you want to change things up there I'd recommend looking at a different power class.

I'm a big believer in leading by example. The commander doesn't necessarily have to be top dps, but should know the mechanics very well and very rarely make any major mistakes.

Additionally, a great commander knows what they're doing well enough to be able to pay more attention to what the other players are doing and potential areas in which they can improve instead of needing to tunnel-vision on their own build.

All you need is some block/damage immunity and good self-sustain, so plenty of professions can do it. Honestly though, I don't get why we see so many different handkite options. Soulbeast is so easy and uses Druid gear so you don't have to make a whole other set of gear for one boss.

If you've got all this cleanse, why are you standing in the roots? All you have to do is remove the immob and then walk a little bit out of them.

> @"Excursion.9752" said:

> @Aaron Forestman.4758

> Or anyone else that knows!

>

> I have another question for you.

> Soulless Horror - Tormented Dead Pusher

> If you have another healer in the group would it be alright to put on DPS gear so you can quickly kill the TD's outside the ring?

> Our current tactic is our scourge uses EPI to send conditions to him but I feel sometimes that is hit or miss. What do you typically do for this role?

I've seen two methods to taking down the TD's:

1) The standard is a scourge with epi. This is what my guild uses. I bring tides and longbow. One small knockback with tides, then the epi hits, then the larger knockback with longbow. This got us through regular and CM modes.

2) Let the TD stay on the group for just the right amount of time to get a nice amount of condis on it, then knock it off. This is more dangerous, but potentially more efficient.

If your other healer is enough, you certainly could take dps gear, but I think it would still be better to use either epi or leaving it on the group for a bit instead of focusing your own damage toward it. With SH being a somewhat high damage fight, I'd recommend two healers unless your squad is cleanly avoiding most everything.

I always thought the cheetah in PoF looked awesome, but alas, it has no use in any game mode.

> @"Excursion.9752" said:

> Thanks for all the help!

>

> Now I have cleared 1-4 & 7 working on the dreaded Wing 5. I had a person in my party ask me to go double Long Bow during the Soulless Horror fight and I did but didn't ask why. Only thing I could think of is that maybe I was suppose to have different sigils? I understand what my jobs was pushing the golems out of the area but why the two bows? We did get the kill but I was left a little perplexed.

>

> Also any tips for what most people say to be the hardest raid in the game against Dhuum?

I guess you could be using quickdraw with your longbow #4? That's not really necessary on SH though. Bring glyph of tides and the glyph recharge reducing trait so it'll be up for every tormented dead, then each one you can hit with your glyph, your longbow, and go back to helping the group. That way you don't have to take skirmishing and you can take marksmanship for Lead the Wind. That piercing is really nice and allows you to not have to worry about positioning so much when knocking back the tormented dead.

Here's my full build for SH:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?POwEM6MssCWCTh1wKxxe6rpVydCD-zRRYQBRoG1c7lR1pQ6VlvDA-e

Note the fury pets instead of the standard set. You won't get to be on your axe/warhorn set as much as usual, so the pets help maintain fury for your group.

As for Dhuum, if you're planning on playing druid against him there's only a couple things you personally will need to deal with. His mechanics are slow but very unforgiving. It's entirely possible for you to be the only on-squad healer (with the kiter usually being a healer spec as well). If that's the case, you can't do a green. If you have another on-squad healer, you can. The biggest thing for the druid to do is swap to brown bear (your other pet can be a standard damage pet like an iboga) right before the greater death mark. As soon as everyone loses their soul, you need to hit your F2 so your bear can cleanse everyone around you of their torment. After that, you can assist with healing and reviving anyone that has taken more damage than they should in getting to their soul. When you get the bomb, it can be really nice to quickdraw your staff #3 to move rapidly across the room and avoid having to be away from the squad for long. If you manage to catch your kiter or a reaper in the initial healing blast with that movement, it'll be recharged almost immediately. If a reaper is in danger from ads, you can 1) provide it massive healing and 2) stealth it by exiting CA near it. This will change the ads' focus to a different reaper, giving your group plenty of time to kill them.

Let me know if you have any more questions! You can always mail/message me in game as well.

I've found it useful in some raids. Most of the time Nature Spirit is better, but particularly on Sloth and Xera when you've got a lot of motion and the potential need for ranged revives, it can be wonderful. Plus if your squad is staying up nicely in Sloth, you can pretty much cancel out every other coconut phase by making your whole squad unable to gain conditions.

Ranger has solid power, condi, and support options. Druid is a fantastic choice for a lot of raid/fractal groups, and you can always do dps on most any fight. I think a lot of the reason ranger is looked down upon so much is that it's a very beginner-friendly class so it attracts some inexperienced people. If you put enough time into mastering it, ranger can be a really amazing and versatile option.

I've been playing druid for quite a while, as I usually end up in heal jail whenever my guild does CMs or other more difficult fights. I prefer Healing Spring for 95% of fights. It fills up your CA quite nicely, and most bosses have at least a little condi that you can easily remove with it. For anything stationary, you can keep up your spirits (including nature) through the entire fight just by making sure they're in your healing AoEs. For something like Sabir, you wait to cast Nature Spirit until the last platform but then should have it up the whole rest of the fight.

> @"aymnad.9023" said:

> Lastly entering CA triggers quickdraw. Meaning you can use you CA 3 twice in a row if you have the good timing. (double heal, double blast, double cc)

As you get more comfortable with healing and your group gets more experienced with mechanics, you can choose which CA skill to quick draw based on the situation. If you're maximizing damage and giving your group plenty of might, quick draw CA 5 with skill 4 in between the two uses of 5. If your party needs more healing, quick draw 4 with a 5 in between the two 4's. Pretty much only use your quick draw on CA 3 if you have people in seriously bad states, as it'll hurt your might output quite a bit.

Definitely go high dps SB. Core ranger is only played because it's easy for new players and fairly survivable. It's far too weak to pull its weight in an significant matches.

Elementalist, of any configuration. They can be a little tanky and have some invuln, but with low armor and low health it only takes 1-2 good shots to drop them.

Guardians and warriors often rely too much on blocks. Before the Signet of the Hunt nerf, they could be melted due to that reliance. Even now, it's not so hard.

> @"Kodama.6453" said:

> Soulbeast gave up absolutely nothing, they just got another button added to their gameplay. They needed to get brought in line with other elite spec designs and removing pet swap during combat fits both gameplaywise and thematically. It was a good change.

I've been quite confused about this update since they first revealed where they were going with soulbeast. It's had a tradeoff since PoF first came out, one of the most glaring ones out there: when you merge to get your extra skills/stats, you don't have your pet there anymore. That seems like a pretty explicit tradeoff to me.

I believe Lich runes are the recommended set for D+T/SB condi soulbeast. Krait is for SB/SB.

https://snowcrows.com/raids/builds/ranger/soulbeast/condition/

That would make the trait end up unused. Maybe for brief spike things in pvp/wvw settings, but in pve it would be a very bad idea to drop your merge in order to get a 5% damage buff for a bit. It could be switched to an activation whenever you use one of your bonded skills so that CC use isn't required, though with a good power build you have more than enough CC for 100% uptime and it's good to use them for damage anyway.

This does seem to be becoming more of a regular thing in fractals especially: pugs not reading the lfg post. If an lfg asks for specific things, either bring those things or don't join.

That would be so weird, and aside from specific cases like the one you gave, you probably wouldn't want this every time you merge.