Guild Wars 2

I’m new to the game, again. . .meaning, I tried it back in 2012, but just couldn’t get in to it. So, I’m back trying to educate myself through game experience and GW2Wiki.

I’m loving the game so far. . .trying out different races and professions.

I’m playing a Ranger right now and I’m curious as to what Attributes I should be focusing on? Primary? Secondary? etc. . .

Reading GW2Wiki, the site gives you definitions of the attributes, but they don’t seem to be profession specific? Must be missing it?

As a Ranger, what are the primary, secondary, derived, special, etc. . .attributes I should focus on?

I’m a little confused by how you worded your question. I’ll answer what I think you’re asking and you can clarify if I missed it, k?

If you’re leveling a ranger in PvE, don’t worry about attributes yet. Just use whatever gear you get as drops or from karma vendors that match your current level. That’ll get you all the way through the story.

After you hit 80 or if you’re doing PvP/WvW, you can look into what you feel you need help with. Are you running conditions but your condition damage is piddly? Do you survive for a long time but hit like a wet noodle? Do you do a few awesome hits but get downed regularly?

There’s really no one best answer to this, despite there being “meta” builds. It’s really about seeing how your gear can support your playstyle. Everyone prefers different stat combos and many change up what they wear for what they’re running at the time.

Unless you’re running a support druid or similar, the one outlier seems to be Healing Power. It won’t hurt you to put a few points in there, but most skills that heal have a low attribute coefficient making the difference seem insignificant. Picking toughness or vitality over healing power generally has more noticeable results.

If you’re asking about the TRAITS and TRAITLINES for a ranger, again it’s really up to you. I’ve used all the traitlines and most of the traits at one point or another, depending on what I wanted to do that day. Meta builds are meta, but they aren’t law.

Hope this helps.

@Churry. . .

Thanks for the relpy. I’m used to playing that other MMO, and if I was a Hunter over there I would only wear gear with agility, let’s say.

I was just wondering if there was a specific attribute or attributes that a Ranger should only wear or concentrate on.

I’m just starting out, so I’m nowhere near lvl 80yet, so I guess I have nothing to concern myself til then.

Thanks again.

Here’s a quick run-down of the attributes you need to be thinking about:
Power – Increases direct damage (any damage not caused by conditions)
Precision – Increases the chance of getting a critical hit (which does extra damage and sometimes causes additional effects)
Toughness – Increases armor
Vitality – Increases health
Boon Duration – Increases (surprise, surprise) how long boons you apply last
Condition Damage – Increases the amount of damage your conditions do
Condition Duration – Increases how long conditions you apply last
Ferocity – Increases the damage caused by your critical hits
Healing Power – Increases the effectiveness of your heal skills

There are a few others (including 1 profession specific attribute per profession) but they’re not actually relevant to your question since you can’t get equipment which provides bonuses to them. Well, you can for Agony Resistance, but that’s a whole separate topic. If you’re interested you can find more info on the wiki.

Now, here’s where it gets complicated.

For the tl;dr version read this paragraph
GW2 was designed from the ground up to allow more flexibility in character builds. There are no purely ranged or melee professions, no dedicated tanks, healers or DPS, no professions that rely entirely on a particular type of damage etc. and as a result there are no attributes that are automatically ‘right’ for any given profession to use. It depends on what you want to do with your character.

[tl;dr ends]

Players will often discuss this in terms of the prefix/suffix given to equipment with a particular attribute combination. For example you’ll often hear players talking about Beserkers or Zerkers/Zerk builds, which is equipment that gives bonuses to Power, Precision and Ferocity – increasing your direct damage and the frequency and damage multiplier of your critical hits. This is a ‘glass cannon’ pure DPS set-up which is very popular for PvE across all professions (although slightly less so than it used to be).

(Quick note: These are different to the actual armor/weapon set names, which (unlike a lot of games) are never used when discussing attributes and builds. This is because the set names refer to the skins and even unique sets like the ones from dungeons are available with multiple attribute combinations. The wardrobe/transmutation system makes them even less relevant because you can easily put any skin onto any equipment piece.)

Choosing attributes

So having established that there is no single right answer and lots of choices how about I actually answer your question?

There’s a few ways you can do this and the choice is yours.

The simplest, but IMO most boring is to copy a build from fan sites, which will tell you what skills and traits to use and what attributes to get to go with it.

More interesting but also more difficult is to experiment with skills and traits yourself, pick ones you like and then pick attributes to match. For example on my engineer I use a lot of conditions so I prioritise Condition Damage, and I found myself dying a lot so I have Toughness as a secondary priority. That gave me a choice of Rabid (with Precision as a 3rd stat), Dire (with Vitality) or Apostate’s (with Healing Power), so I picked Rabid because I find extra critical hits more useful than extra health or healing. (My main is a ranger, but the attributes I chose for her are too complicated to make a good example.)

Or you can pick a role and match the Attributes to it. For example if you wanted a typical DPS character you’d pick something like Beserkers (Power, Precision, Ferocity) or Sinister (Condition Damage, Power and Precision).

Or you can throw your hands in the air, give up and get Celestial, which gives smaller bonuses to all your attributes. (And is actually a good choice for some builds.)

Wow @Danikat, thanks for the well composed/explained reply. Much appreciated.

I LOVE the fact that the sacred trilogy isn’t the “end all be all” of the builds in GW2. It sounds like there is a lot of freedom, w/in reason in this game to build what and how you like. . . .that is friggn’ awesome.

I cannot wait to get to higher levels to be able to
“fiddle” with my traits, and build a custom toon. Very refreshing, compared to what I’m used to.

I’m still trying out different professions to see which I like best, so I’m sure I’ll have a ton more questions . Thanks again.