Untamed - Staff/Dagger Untamed Duelist

The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great

Focused on: Condition damage and Sustain

Designed for: PvP Conquest

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

Easy

This build was last updated on May 31, 2024 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

A high-sustain PvP condition Untamed build made to win or stall smaller fights while also bringing some group healing and utility to the table.

This build's made possible by SotO's weaponmaster training which allows Rangers to use any elite spec weapon.

Skill Bar

Staff

Dagger/Dagger

Utility

Skill Variants

Utility

• Signet of Renewal over Signet of Stone - passive healing plus a stunbreak and mass cleanse instead of defense against strike damage.

Pets

Rock Gazelle can be replaced by:

• Spinegazer - solid damage and some boon corruption.

• Electric Wyvern - mainly an offensive option with CC and damage but also drops a field for Swiftness stacking with Blast finishers or Daze spamming with Leap finishers.

• Jacaranda - offensive option with AoE damage and some CC.

• Siege Turtle - defensive pet with AoE anti-projectile field with Protection sharing.

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Specializations

Variants

• Corrupting Vines makes you better at fighting boon-based bunker builds if you can give up some defense against conditions.

Equipment

Staff

Sigil

Sigil

Dagger

Dagger

Sigil

Sigil

Rune

Amulet

Relic

Equipment Variants

Relics

• Relic of Nayos - higher healing.

Usage

Elite specialization basics

• Untamed Rangers have more control over their pets than regular Rangers, allowing them to manually control their pet's 3 special attacks.

• Unleash is the central mechanic of Untamed. At any given time either you or your pet is in the Unleashed state, and you get to flip back and forth on a 1s CD.

• When you're unleashed, your first autoattack is empowered. Staff's turns into Solar Brilliance while Dagger's becomes Neurotoxin Burst. Unleashing yourself makes you deal more damage.

• Unleashing the pet grants you damage reduction while their pet skills flip over to new ones:
  • F1 becomes Venomous Outburst
  • F2 becomes Rending Vines
  • F3 becomes Enveloping Haze

General

• Dodge rolling is the most important part of your survivability and not only for obvious reasons. From traits you get Protection (which also heals you every second) and remove 1 condition whenever you dodge, turning this mechanic into a great way of recovering from taking damage if you failed to prevent it.

• Cleansing Unleash makes your Unleash ability remove 2 conditions every 10 seconds.

• Use Ancestral Grace for mobility when moving between capture points. In fights however always try landing on an ally or your pet, as healing someone else reduces the CD of this skill.

• Mutate Conditions is for emergencies in case condition damage is starting to overwhelm you. Consider disengaging/repositioning right after or following up with Stealth so you have some time to recover. It's also a stun break.

• "Protect Me!" is both a stun break and an excellent skill for damage mitigation. Hold onto it in case you get stunned if Mutate Conditions is on CD, otherwise you get to use it a bit more freely.

• Forest's Fortification is one of your best survival tools but also one that has good synergy with your more offensive abilities because of the CD reduction part. Skills like Solar Brilliance that can strike several enemies multiple times in just a few seconds can drastically reduce the CD of the elite.

• Venomous Outburst is great for repositioning your pet and making sure they can't be kited.

• Rending Vines applies Slow but only if the target is CC'd. It's still useful for preventing them from counterpressuring you after the CC.

• Enveloping Haze destroys projectiles while the Chill makes it easy for you to kite enemies caught in it.

• Perilous Gift heals more the lower your HP is, so it's worth holding onto until you get really low. As the skill negates incoming damage after being used you don't have to worry about using it on low HP, but you do have to worry about CC - if you greed and try to use it on 2-3k HP but get interrupted then you're probably going to die. Taking risks can pay off with this skill but always consider the situation you're in and what other CDs are available, Signet of Stone for instance could bail you out against Power-based specs if you eat a stun at low HP so you're allowed to be more greedy when SoS is up.

Stealth stacking

• You can stack Stealth for your team by dropping Smokescale's F2 ability Smoke Cloud and using Blast/Leap finishers.

• Both sets have a combo tool for this field:
  • Ancestral Grace on Staff is a Blast finisher, resulting in AoE stealth.
  • Instinctive Engage on Dagger is a Leap finisher, applying stealth only to you.
  • There's also Rending Vines (unleashed pet F2), another Blast finisher for AoE stealth.

• Stealth is useful in many situations from hiding your team before an engagement and ambushing the enemy to moving around the map undetected. With Smoke Cloud ⇒ Rending Vines you even get to stealth yourself while stunned, using only your pet.

Damage

• Dagger/Dagger is your more dangerous set, Staff is mostly defensive by nature.

• Neurotoxin Burst is the strongest skill on this set, it's a ranged gapcloser with decent damage and good condition variety. Always unleash yourself when you swap weapons because Let Loose lets you use the ambush attacks right away.

• Instinctive Engage is good at setting up other skills like Double Arc because of the Quickness.

• Stalker's Strike is best used after Crippling Talon because it deals extra damage to movement-impaired enemies.

• On Staff the skills deal almost neglibile damage, Solar Brilliance combined with the auto spam is the best you can do.

• Gazelle is mostly taken for the CC skills.

Top Streamers

• Twitch: Boyce

Related Builds

• Untamed - Celestial Brilliance Roamer - WvW version of the build.