Condition Soulbeast - PvE - High damage, efficient and fun build

[Marcaum.1302]

First, let me open this topic by saying that I dislike “**meta**” stuff. I don’t like playing like everyone else does, I don’t like to be just more of the same. It is also worth saying that I use this build for ALL PvE content (World, Fractals, Raids, Metas, etc) without changing a single trait.

With that in mind, I’d like to tell you guys how I came to this build, and the success I have achieved with it. I am a new player (been playing for a few months (150 days), but I work from home office, so I can play a lot during the day.)

 

Build: [Condition Soulbeast General PvE](http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAV4YjMqQNLWuCerAVLWcEs8ibzd6yEAmcVumGQmroVi4fA-jBSAQBR7CAcTlgMc/hAqbIkK/6wBBIiq/AgnAQAgDgxHPxLew4jP+4jPeXP+4jP+4jP+4jPepAWUZF-e "Condition Soulbeast General PvE")

 

I think the best way to go is to explain my choices, so, let’s start:

**Short bow**

Since I first started my journey, I fell in love with the Short bow. I love its attack speed and the overall feel of it. With that weapon as my favorite, it is only natural that I follow the condition damage path.

 

**Dagger/Dagger**

Soulbeast added this possibility, and I loved the style. I always hated Axe/Torch for the main reason that I think a character looks silly fighting with a torch. With that being said, **I must add that I almost NEVER switch to Dagger/Dagger, staying on Short bow 90% of the time** (more on that later).

 

**Sigils**

* Agony – Since Poison is maxed at 99.6%, this helps bring our bleeding closer to our poison (74% bleeding).

* Bursting – For lack of a better option.

 

**Viper’s Gear**

No explanation needed for a Condition based build.

 

**Runes**

Rune of Thorns for our poison themed build, the 6th bonus stacks very quick even if you avoid contact at all.

 

 

**Specializations**

 

**Skirmishing **

* Trappers Expertise over Sharpened Edges – This build does not have a very high critical hit chance for Sharpened Edges, but Trappers Expertise can improve A LOT the 3 traps used on the build.

* Hidden Barbs – Just awesome for Bleeding.

* Light on your Feet over Quickdraw – As I said – I seldom swap weapons, and even if I did, Light on your Feet is too awesome to pass, especially for open world, for its pierce, Short bow cooldown reduction and increased damage on dodge.

 

**Wilderness Survival**

* Taste for Danger is perfect to give you that extra vitality, and on top of that, increases you condition durations. Must have.

* Refined Toxins over Ambidexterity – As I said before, I seldom swap to Dagger/Dagger to benefit from Ambi, and with Predator’s Cunning plus the Healing Spring, Fern Hound and group healing, it is very easy to stay above health threshold for RT to proc.

* Poison Master – Just an obvious choice for a build based on bleed and poison, even if you do not swap pets a lot (I don’t).

 

**Soulbeast**

* Live Fast over Fresh Reinforcement – Short bow is ranged, but short ranged, so usually, I always have my pet’s boons anyways, being always close to it. I can benefit from the quickness of live fast better. (By the way, I don’t camp SB mode, I am always rotating).

* Predator’s Cunning – I don’t think this needs explanation on our poison themed build.

* Oppressive Superiority – The only usable trait at this tier.

 

**Skills**

* Healing Spring – Good burst healing, plus regen overtime, for you and your group. It also benefits from Trappers Expertise.

* Sharpening Stone – Awesome damage.

* Spike Trap – Lots of bleedings on area, area knockdown and cripple, made even better from Trappers Expertise.

* Viper’s Nest – POISON! Plus, cripple and a combo field.

* Entangle – LOTS of bleeding, ROOTS, and, most of all, short cooldown.

 

**Pets**

* Fern Hound – I know, what the hell? Well, this girl has been with me since I was a sapling back in the grove, and it’s healing has saved me more times than I can count. It gives a very good aoe heal for me and my group, and it also has a very good and reliable CC for break bars (it does not have an activated F2 CC, but when you swap to it, its first auto attack is a knockdown that does decent break bar damage). Is also gives YOU 2 good CC attacks on beastmode.

* Fanged Iboga – As a Sylvari, I always wanted a full “plant” look and feel. The Fern Hound was perfect for it, but I lacked a good offensive pet. Until PoF. The Fanged Iboga is a very good condition pet, covers 2 conditions I don’t (Torment and Confusion) and has a very good CC skill (Fang Grapple).

 

**Play Style**

Some people think that Viper’s builds are bad and slow for open world PvE. I disagree. You have several burst combos, such as Entangle + Traps + Sharpening Stone + Poison Volley or Entangle + Traps + Sharpening Stone + Primal Cry that will quickly clear a large area of mobs in 2 or 3 pulses. This is also made possible because of Light on Your Feet piercing.

Other than that, it is just basic play of laying traps, shooting enemies, and using your rotations. Switch to Fern Hound when you need a heal (use its howling and then merge and Spiritual Reprieve for a fast 0% to 100% heal). Use Iboga grapple on any mobs that chose to ignore it and come to you. And stay on you Short bow.

Why no weapon Swap – Sure, weapon swap to melee may be beautiful in theory, and arguably efficient on the punching bag test dummy. But on real life, it is just not feasible. We do not have the vitality and toughness to go melee. We simply don’t. That’s why I stay safe with my Short bow, unless the enemy is a super safe pathetic defenseless one (and I can only think about Champion Mordrem Thornheart in Dragon’s Stand). And, believe me or not, my damage stays EXACTLY the same in the training dummy if I include the daggers on the rotation.

All other enemies will kill you, or teleport, stun, knockdown, knockback, stun etc. And something that people seem to not understand is that a downed/dead player deals no damage. A player resurrecting other player deals no damage. That applies to stunned, knocked back/down or teleported people. It is just much more efficient, as a range, to stay at range. Also, the less damage you take, the easier to keep above health threshold for Refined Toxins.

 

**Crowd Control**

So, what about those **Defiance Bars**? We have plenty of options. Concussion Shot and Crippling Shot from Short bow, Fang Grapple from Fanged Iboga, first attack from Fern Hound when swapping to it, and you get 2 more when merging with it. If that is not enough, both traps cause cripple and one has a knockdown.

 

**Efficiency**

So, how do I know this build has been efficient? I put it to use on real world. Open world PvE, Metas, Raids (just started on those).

I know some rangers have being doing absurd damage on the test dummy with their meta builds and runes and pets, but as I said, that does not reflect real world.

I have arcDPS installed, and even though I cannot do gameplay videos for lack of hardware (mainly drive space), I have captured screenshots of my performance at various occasions, varying from Lab farming, boss fighting, meta events and even the super demanding raids. I am usually in first, second place damage wise (sometimes there is a crazy guardian with insane damage on the group), and never below 5th on large groups.

 

* PVE pics - https://imgur.com/a/sT4mL

* Bosses pics - https://imgur.com/a/zkuOn

* Raids pics - https://imgur.com/a/OqY6j

 

So, I think I can honestly say I am really, happy with my character right now, not only because he is a deadly Sylvari Ranger, but also because I managed to build something to play how I feel good with, with the weapons, runes and pets I want, and not what the meta dictates.

 

I’d love to hear your feedback on it, thx for reading this long!

 

 

 

[voltaicbore.8012]

I tried a dagger/dagger build early in PoF, and commited very heavily to poison; I think it was quite similar to yours, but I kept quickdraw. While I absolutely loved having a non-projectile option (8 of 10 weapon abilities in the condi ranger/druid build are projectiles, as you probably know), I felt like not having burning was holding me back. I found that after re-incorporating burning back into my build, my output is usually a lot better than when I committed more heavily to poison.

 

Incorporating burning back into your build would change a lot though, so I'm not sure you'd be interested in trying out a burning (and bleeding, and poisoning) soulbeast. Frankly, that's the only real tweak I could possibly suggest to your build, which as written seems very well suited to the things you mentioned (not swapping a lot, staying mostly in shortbow, etc). This is what I run, no clue if it's anywhere near meta:

 

**Wilderness Survival:** Taste for Danger, Ambidexterity, and Poison Master

**Skirmishing**: Trapper's Expertise, Hidden Barbs, Quickdraw

**Soulbeast**: same as yours.

 

All **gear** (weapons, trinkets, all of it) are ascended Viper.

 

**Runes**: I run the 2 Trapper + 4 Nightmare combo.

 

**Sigils**: shortbow = Agony + Corruption, dagger/torch = Venom + Smoldering. I have 92% bleed uptime increase on shortbow, and 74% of both burning and poison on swap to dagger+torch. I keep promising myself that I'll replace the Corruption sigil, but I always forget because it's not really a priority for me.

 

**Utilities**: Healing Spring, Flame Trap, Viper's Nest, Spike Trap, Entangle. Never thought I'd see the day I ran 4 traps lol.

 

**Pets**: Lynx & Marsh Drake. I really haven't given much thought to optimizing pet choice, but I do find merging with the marsh drake quite handy for pretty substantial healing. Healing Spring can allow me to leap once or twice into it with dagger 3 for a heal, and merged f2 being a blast area heals, and f1 being a heal attack rounds it out. All while the spring cleanses a wide area, and I haven't even touched the f3 area heal+resistance. The extra vitality from the merge of course synergizes a little with Taste for Danger as well.

 

------------------------------

 

I find this build helps me focus on stacking burning, poison, and bleeding, with bleeding taking the lead in terms of stacks but burning usually outperforming the other 2 condis. I never ran the condi druid meta that involved Poison Master and Viper's Nest, so having a second trait line (in soulbeast) encourage poison use gave me a chance to try adding poison onto my primarily burning + bleeding build.

 

Kills are fast, I'm rarely in danger of dying (and when I am, that healing combo I mentioned is excessive). I would consider cc a weakness of my build, which I might addressby replacing my Lynx with the Iboga. I think if I read this when I first started doing condi ranger, I might have liked the idea of camping shortbow consistently and making use of Light on Your Feet. But I've really come to like Quickdraw and swapping regularly, especially since dagger mainhand offers quickness on a faster cycle than f3 beast abilities.

 

EDIT: As I continued reading your build, I realized a key difference between yours and mine: a ton of my condis come from traps, while more of yours come from just directly applying them at range (confu from Iboga, Sharpening Stone, etc). I could see this being something really putting your build's performance well above mine in certain situations. I'm pretty good at laying traps predictively, in that the mob never really leaves the trap for its entire duration, but I know in some movement heavy fights mobs just aren't eating every pulse on my traps.

 

------------------------------

 

TLDR: appears to be a solid build, especially for what you wanted to achieve! If I ever want to leave burning by the wayside, I'll definitely try yours out.

[Spartyr.6795]

I'm playing this right now and it's really good! I've been testing this against the Awakened around the Deadhouse in Elon Riverlands. I kill everything along that southern strip and time myself and evaluate speed vs survivability. This build gets high marks for sure.

 

I think it's the ease of use. I worried about lack of condi clear as it's especially thick in the area I tested, but the killing is so fast that along with your ranged attacks, the Healing Spring trap was all I ever needed. One thing I did change was to take a stun break. I swapped in Dolyak Stance for Sharpening Stone but aside from that I ran it verbatim. (Fern Hound and everything, lol).

 

Really nice job with this.

[Aceofsppades.6873]

I find your rune choice to be straight up worst than 4xnightmare/2xtrapper, and if you ran nightmare/trapper you could replace agony with an earth sigil.

[Marcaum.1302]

> @voltaicbore.8012 said:

> Incorporating burning back into your build would change a lot though, so I'm not sure you'd be interested in trying out a burning (and bleeding, and poisoning) soulbeast. Frankly, that's the only real tweak I could possibly suggest to your build, which as written seems very well suited to the things you mentioned (not swapping a lot, staying mostly in shortbow, etc). This is what I run, no clue if it's anywhere near meta:

 

I tried Burning Trap instead of the Sharpening Stone, it was a straight up DPS loss! Since I don;t really care much for Fire, I gladly swapped it! But the options we have is what really makes this all cool, we can (to some extent) adapt to our play style.

End yes, most of my damage comes from just shooting at stuff, constantly applying new stacks of bleeds and poison, while the piercing from Light on your Feet makes every arrow an AoE damage. :-)

 

[Marcaum.1302]

> @Aceofsppades.6873 said:

> I find your rune choice to be straight up worst than 4xnightmare/2xtrapper, and if you ran nightmare/trapper you could replace agony with an earth sigil.

 

 

As said in the beginning, I play to have fun, to play how I like. Sure, I want to be efficient as well, but that does not mean I have to follow the "meta rules" on everything. That is exactly the point of this post.

[Spartyr.6795]

> @Aceofsppades.6873 said:

> I find your rune choice to be straight up worst than 4xnightmare/2xtrapper, and if you ran nightmare/trapper you could replace agony with an earth sigil.

 

Thorn runes aren't obviously worse to me. +100 Condition Damage, +25% Condition Duration (nightmare/trapper) vs. +175 Condition Damage (not incl. 6 rune bonus), +45% Poison Duration.

 

I'm not familiar enough with benchmarking to know how maximum theoretical DPS factors in, but these don't look like apples to apples comparison to me.

[Frozen.1347]

> @Marcaum.1302 said:

> > @Aceofsppades.6873 said:

> > I find your rune choice to be straight up worst than 4xnightmare/2xtrapper, and if you ran nightmare/trapper you could replace agony with an earth sigil.

>

>

> As said in the beginning, I play to have fun, to play how I like. Sure, I want to be efficient as well, but that does not mean I have to follow the "meta rules" on everything. That is exactly the point of this post.

 

Then better replace your viper gear with something else, because that's meta too.

 

No, srsly, of course it is totally fine to play a non-meta build, that is more fun for you, because of the gameplay, rp reasons, or whatever (range only, plant pets, ...). But why would somebody refuse something just because it is part of the meta? I mean, a different rune or sigil won't change how your build plays or looks like. Sure, if it doesn't make a huge difference it also means, it doesn't really matter. But i just don't understand this meta = bad attitude. Your build already incorporates a lot of things that are also used in the meta build, which happens naturally if you try to create a somewhat useful build, so why would different runes make the build less fun for you? Not that your rune choice is bad, and i don't want to convince you to play something different, i just don't understand your reasoning.

 

Also please don't spread misinformation like "ranger can't go melee". Because rangers can go melee just as well as everyone else (and even your shortbow is more efficient at melee range).

[Chrury.4627]

> @Frozen.1347 said:

> No, srsly, of course it is totally fine to play a non-meta build, that is more fun for you, because of the gameplay, rp reasons, or whatever (range only, plant pets, ...). But why would somebody refuse something just because it is part of the meta? I mean, a different rune or sigil won't change how your build plays or looks like. Sure, if it doesn't make a huge difference it also means, it doesn't really matter. But i just don't understand this meta = bad attitude. Your build already incorporates a lot of things that are also used in the meta build, which happens naturally if you try to create a somewhat useful build, so why would different runes make the build less fun for you? Not that your rune choice is bad, and i don't want to convince you to play something different, i just don't understand your reasoning.

 

If I may pipe in on this tangent; I too have struggled with this anti-meta mentality. I realized, for me, that it is not that I despise efficient ways of playing. Rather it's the weight of "meta" that hurts it. It is often presented as *the correct* or *the only* way to play.

In a game where your build is the biggest instance of problem solving in the game; following a meta is like reading a walkthrough or (literally) following a guide. Meta builds are valid and, I admit, very efficient solutions to the build puzzle. But they aren't _my_ solution and that pulls a lot of the fun out of it.

 

False or not, saying something isn't meta feels like you're saying it's invalid. I would suggest framing suggestions with "this is why this works" instead of "this is the meta". The discussion will be better and we should hopefully avoid some knee-jerk "meta/anti-meta" reactions.

 

On topic: I'm glad to see someone else running Light on Your Feet. I agree, it's pretty sweet. I generally swap to it over Quick Draw in open world as I don't weapon swap nearly as much if I'm not raiding.

[Prophet.1584]

I won't compare your build to the meta build because you said you play what you find fun so while this may not work for others, it does work for you. however, i will say that it could be improved.

 

Anet nerfed the duration buff from trappers expertise so i'd probably drop that and go with hidden barbs. i'd also swap poison master for wilderness knowledge. if you slot TU>HS and keep entangle and Sharpening Stone you can apply a lot of bleeds and a lot of fury to yourself and pet. Refined Toxins will give you more poison applications in a real world scenario than poison master and the damage increase will be made up by your crits and bleed application.

if you're the only ranger don't forget to use Spotter, it's a huge party buff and will give you more crits as well. i'd also probably swap Jacaranda for the Fern Hound, you'll still get a CC, a heal and the bonus of an AOE skill in and out of beastmode.

 

Have Fun!

[Wondrouswall.7169]

> @Prophet.1584 said:

> Anet nerfed the duration buff from trappers expertise so i'd probably drop that and go with hidden barbs. i'd also swap poison master for wilderness knowledge. if you slot TU>HS and keep entangle and Sharpening Stone you can apply a lot of bleeds and a lot of fury to yourself and pet.

 

I assume you meant Sharpened Edges instead of Hidden Barbs on the first one. Also, Wilderness Survival does not apply Fury to your Pet when a Survival skill is activated. Hence, why it keeps being mentioned when a topic of having more things (traits/utilities/etc) should also affect/apply to the Pet. :tongue:

[Marcaum.1302]

> @Frozen.1347 said:

> Also please don't spread misinformation like "ranger can't go melee". Because rangers can go melee just as well as everyone else (and even your shortbow is more efficient at melee range).

So, I never said I chose this rune because I hate meta stuff, I think I justified every single piece of equipment and traits I chose on my original post. Also, I made this topic to show how "I" play, and how "I" feel and how "I" perceive the game, the class and build, so I am entitled to spread whatever information I see fit to complement my point. Feel free to create your own topic showcasing how good rangers are at melee with medium armor and 15k HP, but please, do not presume to tell me what I can say or not.

 

[Frozen.1347]

> @Chrury.4627 said:

 

> False or not, saying something isn't meta feels like you're saying it's invalid.

>

 

This was absolutely not my intention. I use the word "meta" because it is not only a commonly used term, but also because the OP himself uses it as reason to not like something.

There **are** plenty of good reasons to not use a build that many would consider meta (while completely forgetting, that most meta builds are designed for very specific content and circumstances, and not neccessarily the optimum let alone required for everything and everyone). I just think that playing non-meta (again, not meant negative) for the sake of playing non-meta is not one of those good reasons, and i don't understand why peole (not only the OP) do it.

But i guess it would be better to discuss this topic elsewhere, so sorry for derailing this thread.

[Aceofsppades.6873]

> @Marcaum.1302 said:

> > @Aceofsppades.6873 said:

> > I find your rune choice to be straight up worst than 4xnightmare/2xtrapper, and if you ran nightmare/trapper you could replace agony with an earth sigil.

>

>

> As said in the beginning, I play to have fun, to play how I like. Sure, I want to be efficient as well, but that does not mean I have to follow the "meta rules" on everything. That is exactly the point of this post.

 

I don't understand how thorns is more fun than nighmare/trapper it doesn't change anything about how you play it's just an objectively worst rune choice. I also don't understand your mentality of not being meta for the sake of itself. Also bursting is straight up worst than earth.

[Spartyr.6795]

> @Prophet.1584 said:

> I won't compare your build to the meta build because you said you play what you find fun so while this may not work for others, it does work for you. however, i will say that it could be improved.

>

> Anet nerfed the duration buff from trappers expertise so i'd probably drop that and go with hidden barbs. i'd also swap poison master for wilderness knowledge. if you slot TU>HS and keep entangle and Sharpening Stone you can apply a lot of bleeds and a lot of fury to yourself and pet. Refined Toxins will give you more poison applications in a real world scenario than poison master and the damage increase will be made up by your crits and bleed application.

> if you're the only ranger don't forget to use Spotter, it's a huge party buff and will give you more crits as well. i'd also probably swap Jacaranda for the Fern Hound, you'll still get a CC, a heal and the bonus of an AOE skill in and out of beastmode.

>

> Have Fun!

 

I don’t agree with this. Using Entangle as an example, you wouldn’t use Entangle on cooldown in open world just for bleed application since the root could keep you alive. So that potentially reduces bleed application which affects whether you can make up the lost damage from taking Wilderness Knowledge over Poison Master.

 

It’s all about real world application. I like OP’s build over your suggested changes in solo PvE. In groups it might be different.

 

 

[Marcaum.1302]

> @Aceofsppades.6873 said:

> > @Marcaum.1302 said:

> > > @Aceofsppades.6873 said:

> > > I find your rune choice to be straight up worst than 4xnightmare/2xtrapper, and if you ran nightmare/trapper you could replace agony with an earth sigil.

> >

> >

> > As said in the beginning, I play to have fun, to play how I like. Sure, I want to be efficient as well, but that does not mean I have to follow the "meta rules" on everything. That is exactly the point of this post.

>

> I don't understand how thorns is more fun than nighmare/trapper it doesn't change anything about how you play it's just an objectively worst rune choice. I also don't understand your mentality of not being meta for the sake of itself. Also bursting is straight up worst than earth.

 

As I said, I never ditched anything just because "it is meta". Again, if you read my post, I explained the reoson behind everything I chose. I never gave Earth sigil a shot, mainly because I never considered this build has enough critical hit chance to benefit from critical hit procs. I may as well give it a try, since, as I stated, I use bursting for lack of options.

[Aceofsppades.6873]

> @Marcaum.1302 said:

> > @Aceofsppades.6873 said:

> > > @Marcaum.1302 said:

> > > > @Aceofsppades.6873 said:

> > > > I find your rune choice to be straight up worst than 4xnightmare/2xtrapper, and if you ran nightmare/trapper you could replace agony with an earth sigil.

> > >

> > >

> > > As said in the beginning, I play to have fun, to play how I like. Sure, I want to be efficient as well, but that does not mean I have to follow the "meta rules" on everything. That is exactly the point of this post.

> >

> > I don't understand how thorns is more fun than nighmare/trapper it doesn't change anything about how you play it's just an objectively worst rune choice. I also don't understand your mentality of not being meta for the sake of itself. Also bursting is straight up worst than earth.

>

> As I said, I never ditched anything just because "it is meta". Again, if you read my post, I explained the reoson behind everything I chose. I never gave Earth sigil a shot, mainly because I never considered this build has enough critical hit chance to benefit from critical hit procs. I may as well give it a try, since, as I stated, I use bursting for lack of options.

 

Your reason for thorns Rune of Thorns

 

>for our poison themed build, the 6th bonus stacks very quick even if you avoid contact at all.

 

and your explanation doesn't hold up because for your exact build nightmare/trapper + malice sigil would be better than thorns +agony.

[voltaicbore.8012]

> @Marcaum.1302 said:

> > @voltaicbore.8012 said:

> > Incorporating burning back into your build would change a lot though, so I'm not sure you'd be interested in trying out a burning (and bleeding, and poisoning) soulbeast. Frankly, that's the only real tweak I could possibly suggest to your build, which as written seems very well suited to the things you mentioned (not swapping a lot, staying mostly in shortbow, etc). This is what I run, no clue if it's anywhere near meta:

>

> I tried Burning Trap instead of the Sharpening Stone, it was a straight up DPS loss! Since I don;t really care much for Fire, I gladly swapped it! But the options we have is what really makes this all cool, we can (to some extent) adapt to our play style.

> End yes, most of my damage comes from just shooting at stuff, constantly applying new stacks of bleeds and poison, while the piercing from Light on your Feet makes every arrow an AoE damage. :-)

>

 

I thought this (the dps loss for flame trap instead of sharpening stone) would happen for you, especially if you didn't re-rune or re-sigil to promote burning or duration in general. Not only that, but if you didn't take quickdraw and pick up a torch, then flame trap alone would be a terrible idea. No surprise there.

 

I don't raid (yet), but just a question for you: is there a lot of projectile hate in any of the raids you've run? I do a decent amount of spvp and am thus inherently uncomfortable with projectile dependence, but I'm also aware of my own bias there.

[voltaicbore.8012]

> @Frozen.1347 said:

 

> This was absolutely not my intention. I use the word "meta" because it is not only a commonly used term, but also because the OP himself uses it as reason to not like something.

> There **are** plenty of good reasons to not use a build that many would consider meta (while completely forgetting, that most meta builds are designed for very specific content and circumstances, and not neccessarily the optimum let alone required for everything and everyone). I just think that playing non-meta (again, not meant negative) for the sake of playing non-meta is not one of those good reasons, and i don't understand why peole (not only the OP) do it.

> But i guess it would be better to discuss this topic elsewhere, so sorry for derailing this thread.

 

For what it's worth, I _didn't_ read your original comment on this subject as a how-dare-you-abandon-meta finger wag. I always suggest meta builds to people who ask, but stress that it's a starting point to get a feel for how different things might synergize when you want to commit to one thing or another.

 

[Lazze.9870]

> @Marcaum.1302 said:

> > @Aceofsppades.6873 said:

> > I find your rune choice to be straight up worst than 4xnightmare/2xtrapper, and if you ran nightmare/trapper you could replace agony with an earth sigil.

>

>

> As said in the beginning, I play to have fun, to play how I like. Sure, I want to be efficient as well, but that does not mean I have to follow the "meta rules" on everything. That is exactly the point of this post.

 

How does the choice between two different rune sets that basically boils down to how much condi damage and duration you get out of it change how much fun you have? I get where the argument of not "following the meta" is coming from, but come on, that choice isn't gonna change anything about how you're playing.

 

Besides, the meta build for raids and fractals isn't made nor is it optimal for open world solo play.

[NiiKBr.1507]

I like your build, fun to play and I agree about it feeling kind of dorky running around with a torch as a weapon. As far as the spiraling "why not meta" argument, it's too bad that you're getting so much hate for playing your way, especially when you stated up front that this was a build you played for fun and not a "the very best" build post. I wish we had more access to the open-world pve builds that people like to run daily, but unfortunately I'm afraid being met by the hostility of the "not playing meta just to not play meta is bad" crowd prevents a lot of those posts from being created. So anyway, thanks again for sharing! Keep us updated if you decide to tweak anything and think it improves your build.

[Hawken.7932]

I run a similar build, OP, also with the same runes, but torch offhand(gasp). I have usually run build close to meta in the past, but I completely agree with your thoughts regarding testing dps versus “real world” scenarios. Often min/max testing doesn’t reflect either #1 the amount of movement required in combat and/or target switching, or #2 survivability.

 

I really like soulbeast’s synergy with poison, especially with the passive self healing. Anyway, thanks for posting.

[Burnfall.9573]

> @Marcaum.1302 said:

> > @Frozen.1347 said:

> > Also please don't spread misinformation like "ranger can't go melee". Because rangers can go melee just as well as everyone else (and even your shortbow is more efficient at melee range).

> So, I never said I chose this rune because I hate meta stuff, I think I justified every single piece of equipment and traits I chose on my original post. Also, I made this topic to show how "I" play, and how "I" feel and how "I" perceive the game, the class and build, so I am entitled to spread whatever information I see fit to complement my point. Feel free to create your own topic showcasing how good rangers are at melee with medium armor and 15k HP, but please, do not presume to tell me what I can say or not.

>

 

'Listen to the advice from the one/s who's already achieved your goal'

 

[Butch.4957]

I have a very similar build to you as well OP but I spec more for bleeds and burns than poison.

Link for reference: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAV4fjEqQNLWwCmrAVLWMEsmOQwqFwEAGdnu8q72d8WixjD-jRhPQBqU5H1U/hY6eAw+DvUJIpAeUZF-e

 

I am extremely curious however. How much healing are you really getting from your poison is it similar to the heal ticks from a Thief’s signet if malice (so every time damage ticks on enemy, you heal)? Or does it only proc the first time you directly apply poison to an enemy.

[Marcaum.1302]

> @Butch.4957 said:

> I have a very similar build to you as well OP but I spec more for bleeds and burns than poison.

> Link for reference: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAV4fjEqQNLWwCmrAVLWMEsmOQwqFwEAGdnu8q72d8WixjD-jRhPQBqU5H1U/hY6eAw+DvUJIpAeUZF-e

>

> I am extremely curious however. How much healing are you really getting from your poison is it similar to the heal ticks from a Thief’s signet if malice (so every time damage ticks on enemy, you heal)? Or does it only proc the first time you directly apply poison to an enemy.

 

Sadly, it is the first time only, but between Poison Volley (5 hits), Viper's Next (depends on how many foes are on top of it), Refined Toxins (when above 75% health) and Light on your Feet adding the pierce effect to every auto attack, you proc the effect pretty often. It is not AMAZING, but it helps a lot on tough spots, and to mitigate constant low damage that you usually get on raids or meta events like Pod room fights on Dragon Stand.