GW2 My spirit/bleed build

[TIG]

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fMQ...5egKTdqLWItK;T0AAzCqosyYlwKLVOrkWtqYUxpidFvKA

As a personal preference 10 points can be taken out of wilderness survival and put into marksmanship. This sacrifices some toughness, condition damage, warhorn cooldown reduction, and protection boon on dodge for a free sharpening stone (5 bleeds) at 75% health, Opening Strikes (vulnerability on first attack), and a little power and condition duration.

This build is 0/20/20/30/0 Focusing on getting bleeds on target, and having traits and spirits buff you, your pet, and allies.

Boons
All the boons you get also get applied to your pet.
when you have a boon you and your pet do an extra 5% damage.
Boons last 30% longer.
Stone Spirit has a 35% chance to give you and nearby allies protection
Swapping weapons grant swiftness and fury.
Dodging gives Protection to you and your pet for 2 seconds

Conditions
Crits have a chance to cause bleeds.
Sharpening Stone causes bleed on the next 5 attacks.
Axe (2) causes 5 bleeds.
Axe (3) causes the next pet attack to apply chill
Shortbow (4) causes the next 3 pet attacks to apply bleeds
Shortbow (2) causes 5 poison.
Shortbow (1) can cause bleed if hit from side or back.
Lynx (F2) causes 2 bleeds.
Lynx (maul) causes 4 bleeds.
Lynx (slash) causes vulnerability.
Hyena can knockdown or apply cripple.

Skill Recharge
Shortbow, Warhorn, and Sharpening Stone all have 20% faster cooldown

Damage
Points equal to 10% of your vitality is applied as a bonus to power.
56% crit chance.
20% extra crit damage.
+200 condition damage.
Storm Spirit has a 35% chance to give you and nearby allies 10% more damage.
Swaping weapons and using Warhorn (5) will grant an extra 20% crit chance each.
Hyena (F2) doubles its damage, knockdown and cripple applications by summoning another hyena.

Survivability
+200 toughness.
+300 vitality.
Healing spring will grant regen and remove conditions. Also counts as a water combo field to shoot through.
Spirit of nature will remove conditions and 2sec revive downed players.
Stone Spirit grants protection.
Endurance recharges 50% faster for more dodges.

Playstyle on this build is medium and short range, getting in close (use dodge to gain the protection boon) to make sure all 5 applications of the condition on Shortbow (2) and Axe (2) hit. Stay at medium range otherwise to keep yourself out of trouble. Swap weapons often to gain Swiftness and Fury for you and your pet and keep the 5% damage buff up for you and your pet by always having a boon on you. Keep spirits and sharpening stone up every time they are off cooldown, except for the Elite: Spirit of Renewal. Use the elite when you or an ally is in trouble and if you activate its ability within 2 seconds before you are downed it will instantly revive you.

Optimal rotation is: Spirits and Sharpening Stone active, Warhorn (5), swap weapons, Shortbow (4), Lynx (F2), Shortbow (2), swap weapons, Axe (2), Warhorn (4). This should will put 12 guaranteed bleeds plus usually another 6 to 10 from crits, 5 poison, and 2 vulnerable on your enemy in 7 seconds. I have seen as high as 25 bleeds with this rotation.

Dodging into mele range for Shortbow (2) and Axe (2) will get you in close so you hit the foe with all 5 projectiles from each attack and give you and your pet a 2 second protection boon. Then dodge to the side or through your target to take advantage of Shortbow (1)'s bleed effect on auto shot.

Keep Warhorn (5) up as much as possible for might and fury boons. Swap weapons as much as possible to give yourself another fury boon and swiftness. Warhorn (5) and weapon swapping will give you over 90% crit chance and that means more bleeds.

If you need to go defensive, drop healing spring and kite inside of it to keep getting regeneration for you and your pet and to use it as a combo field for your projectiles. Activating the abilities on Stone Spirit and Storm Spirit will lay down fields that will cripple, immobilize and chill your foes. Worst case scenerio use your Elite: Spirit of Renewal to try to cheat death by timing a self rez right before you die. The spirit's rez ability takes 2 seconds to cast so die within those 2 seconds and you pop right back up at about 1/3 life.

Points in toughness and vitality keep this from being a glass cannon build and lets you survive in a fight. If you need even more survivability you can change some of the cooldown reduction traits to more survival traits, like regen at 75% health, pet regen on crits, disables like stun go to pets instead of you, stealth on disables, and so on.

 

[Diremongoose]

Looks like a strong build on paper, nice trait interactions.

Couple of related questions: when you're only getting 126 power from your 10% vitality trait, is it worth it?
I realise you're using criticals to add extra conditions, but is extra crit damage a false economy when your basic damage/power could easily be 400-500 points higher?

 

[TIG]

that 10% vitality trait is there cause there isnt much better choices. 33% longer regens that I put on is ok if you need survivability and the only other worth looking at is twice as much health for spirits. I didnt seem to need the healing or if I did 33% of my regens wouldnt be enough and the spirits never really got focused so extra health was kinda wasted. That was the best dps boost in the tier and I have to go down that tree to get boosted, moving spirits.

Ya the focus is on adding bleeds through crits and traits. The fact that bleeds stack in intensity and not duration means if I can get lots the mobs and players go down fast. In the test areas the mobs went down faster to my burst than most other people I saw, and in spvp when I could get a good stack people either died or panicked cause I was ticking about 4k a second with 20 bleeds. Usually for 5 to 10 seconds with more dropping on every few seconds.

I'm sure there are better builds out there, but this one interacts so well with itself it really does a good job in burst and a more than passable job in sustaining dps and survivability. Condition wipe is pretty lacking though. At least from the play in bwe3 and stress tests.

 

[Wooje]

T1G, looks like you are trying to balance out a combat support build by adding condition damage using traits and crits. I tried doing the same thing when I was playing around with the spirit build, but found out I was actually taking away from my main focus... The Spirits. The Spirit build is by far the best support build in the Ranger profession IMO. Diremongoose is right on, your build looks strong, because it is balanced. But you’re not going to be the strongest condition crit damager or combat supporter because your kind of in the middle of the too. I'm an all or nothing kind of guy, there is no middle/gray area with me either I am a condition build or Support build. Your build is in the gray... you’re going to be very good at applying bleed conditions while buffing and supporting allies, but you’re not going to be great at both.

I recently throw out my spirit build and decided to go with a Trap/condition build because the spirit build requires more management than any other Ranger build. You basically have to manage weapon swapping, pet swapping and using F2 skills, keeping spirits up off cool downs and using their skills effectively and booning allies and dodging, using weapon skills. While on my Trap/condition build: weapon swapping, pet swapping and using F2 skills, and setting traps, dodging, using weapon skills.

Also, something I have noticed is Spirits die twice as fast if you don't have vigorous spirits trait so your pretty much have to keep a eye on their health and wait for them to come off cool downs rendering you combat ineffective until those spirits are up, just my IMO. Traps you don't have to manage so much. But anywhoo!! great thing about GW2 you can play the way you want and still be effective to a certain extent. Nice build T1G.

 

[TIG]

Glad you like it and yes I was going for a more balanced build, because I felt I needed more survivability than just a straight up condition damage build. Since I was dropping some general condition bonuses I also made it try to focus on bleeds.

T1G, looks like you are trying to balance out a combat support build by adding condition damage using traits and crits. I tried doing the same thing when I was playing around with the spirit build, but found out I was actually taking away from my main focus... The Spirits. The Spirit build is by far the best support build in the Ranger profession IMO.Diremongoose is right on, your build looks strong, because it is balanced. But you’re not going to be the strongest condition crit damager or combat supporter because your kind of in the middle of the too.

I wont be the highest condition crit damager, but I will probably be more consistant throughout the length of a fight and be able to live through one better. I like a little more control over how the fight goes compared to the luck of the burst builds. The support side of things are really aimed more at my survival than others, even though there is good allies support in there.

I'm an all or nothing kind of guy, there is no middle/gray area with me either I am a condition build or Support build. Your build is in the gray... you’re going to be very good at applying bleed conditions while buffing and supporting allies, but you’re not going to be great at both.

Which is actually fine with me, since to do one or the other at min/max standards you have to give up the flip side of the coin. I think this build will be better for people who want to do these jobs but have some range to branch out to more of an all around playstyle.

I recently throw out my spirit build and decided to go with a Trap/condition build because the spirit build requires more management than any other Ranger build. You basically have to manage weapon swapping, pet swapping and using F2 skills, keeping spirits up off cool downs and using their skills effectively and booning allies and dodging, using weapon skills. While on my Trap/condition build: weapon swapping, pet swapping and using F2 skills, and setting traps, dodging, using weapon skills.

Even though I havent looked hard at it, a trap condition build will probably be much better for getting more total and more varried conditions on the foes, along with more enemy control. It's just a different focus. As for complicated play, I think the ranger is one of the easier professions to pick up, but one of the harder ones to excel at. Every ranger should be chosing the right pet for the build and staying on top of the pet management. In my build I can really keep the lynx out most of the time and just worry about his health. Other builds I looked at you want to swap out pets constantly to go with what action you are doing right then.

Also, something I have noticed is Spirits die twice as fast if you don't have vigorous spirits trait so your pretty much have to keep a eye on their health and wait for them to come off cool downs rendering you combat ineffective until those spirits are up, just my IMO. Traps you don't have to manage so much. But anywhoo!! great thing about GW2 you can play the way you want and still be effective to a certain extent. Nice build T1G.

I havent seen my spirits die overly much when I try to stay at mid range and only come in for the shotgun to the face skills. If they do its an easy switch for a tier 1 talent to give them the vigorous spirits trait. Even being on cooldown wont make me combat ineffective because they are not the main focus of my build like a pure support build would be.

Thanks for the kind words and honest critique of the build. I will be looking at some more focused builds in the next two weeks. Hopefully there will be another stress test or 4 in the next 2 weeks so I can try out some that look good.