Guild Wars 2

Greetings

I’m still a pretty big noob in GW2 but am enjoying the game alot and want to improve my effectiveness in dungeons. So, I went searching for “the best Ranger build for dungons” etc and came across one. The gear suggested though has “Ebon Vanguard Longbow of Fire”.

I can’t find where to get this. I can buy a rare one called Ebon Vanguard Longbow in Kestrel Market but it’s stats are different (it’s Ebon Vanguard Longbow of Force). It’s also rare quality and the bow in the guide is exotic (I think if that’s what the term is for Orange quality).

If this is the correct bow, how does one change it into exotic and “of fire” instead “of force”? Is it to do with that Mystic Forge (which I’m even more clueless about :S).

Many thanks for any assistance!

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Fire

Slap one of these on it and it will be “of Fire.” Generally, whenever you have a weapon or armor piece that says “of something,” that indicates the upgrade component attached to it.

Since you said you’re new, I’ll remind you that adding one upgrade component (Sigil of Fire) destroys a previous one (Sigil of Force, in this case.)

Also, there are other longbows with the same stat set (Power primary, Toughness & Vitality secondary,) so you might find the same stats for cheaper if you shop around. The Ebon Vanguard bow does have a pretty cool skin, though.

Welcome to the game!

Ah cool – tyvm!

Hi Tarmac,

For good Ranger builds you might be better off looking in the “Ranger” sub-section of the forums, but since it is the section about helping players, let me try to help here as well! ;-)

First off, so you know, Longbow for Rangers is not a DPS weapon, but a crowd-control weapon (knockbacks + cripple). Its auto-attack does very very bad DPS in the confined spaces of dungeons and all your good group abilities require you to be close to your party members. So forget the Longbow for Dungeons! (and probably for PVE questing too).

The current approach to dungeon running at the moment (if you use LFG) will require you to do a lot of stacking and meleeing, so running melee weapons is not a constraint but even a “requirement” by the meta. Since the highest DPS weapon for Rangers is the Sword (one-handed) it is also a good thing for you.

If the fight requires a lot of avoidance/dodging (like Alpha in Crucible of Eternity or Kohler in Ascalonian Catacombs) you might want to run Sword/Dagger, otherwise you can safely run Sword/Warhorn. You can also simply equip one Sword in your main hand and use weapons swapping to alternate between Sword/Dagger and Sword/Warhorn during the fight, so you cycle your off-hand while waiting on their CDs. For fights with lots of AoE and small adds you could run Sword/Warhorn along with Sword/Axe. But remember to keep swapping between weapons during fight to maximise uptime of all your big CDs and procc Fury (see below).

In terms of skills and traits, go for those that not only help you but all your group: definitely take the “Spotter” trait; also consider going for Frost Spirit to contribute to your group’s DPS. Use Healing Spring where your group stacks or on the boss to help yourself and team mates; you can also blast the spring yourself with your Warhorn 5 for extra AoE healing. Quickening Zephyr is a nice skill to break stuns/fears and give yourself a short DPS boost.

In terms of Trait lines I personally run 30/20/20/0/0.

That build gives you a strong basis of DPS with the Power, Precision and Crit dmg it gives you. It also encourages you to swap weapons during the fight to gain Fury/Swiftness from Skirmishing, which is good with the weapon combo I mentioned above. You can grab “Off-hand training” for a higher uptime of Warhorn 5 (Fury!) and more frequent Calls of the Wild (a very high DPS burst from Warhorn 4).

Always try to have at least 5 in Wilderness Survival for Natural Vigor as it will save your life in many situations and learn to Dodge. “Dead-DPS is no-DPS”

I run with mostly Berserker stats armor, weapons and trinkets, but use a Soldier chest and shoulders (Power/Toughness/Vitality), one Cavalier trinket and one Knight Trinket. The extra bit of Toughness/Vitality does not take too much off your DPS, but definitely increases your survivability in some dungeon fights.

Cheers,
Zel

One thing to look for… usually the name of the piece of gear means the skin while the “of” bit to the vigil.

In particular, the ebon longbow is sold in ebonhawke for karma, it’s one of the cultural weapon set for ebonhawke. There are three types, level 40 (9800 karma), 60 (35000 karma) and 80 (63000 karma), they all look the same, the difference is the levels of the stats.

The level 80, for example, ebon longbow is a rare (yellow) longbow that has power as primary stats, and toughness and vitality as secondary… but it won’t be better than any other power-toughness-vitality longbow (basically, any longbow named as “soldier’s”… kinda like "Soldier’s longbow of fire). Every gear with the same quality level and the same stat distribution will be exactly the same when it comes to how it work, the only difference is on how they look.

@Zelu – Thanks for that information. How do people guage what is better dps – can you have an add-on or something that shows your dps or is it simply by timing how long it takes to kill a mob?

@locoman – yeah I noticed some of that alright but didn’t know it was skin specific – cheers.

Tarmac.5143:

@Zelu – Thanks for that information. How do people guage what is better dps – can you have an add-on or something that shows your dps or is it simply by timing how long it takes to kill a mob?

Unfortunately there is no authorized add-on for DPS recount that I am aware of.

Some theory-crafting is occasionally taking place on these forums based on the raw damage figures presented in the tool-tips of weapons, then extrapolating those an o constructed fight setting. The GW2 Wiki also has a page on damage calculation.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2_Wiki:Damage_calculation

I guess a rough method could be indeed to solo the same Veteran over and over again (e.g. WvW guard or some other Veteran with a fast spawn time) and see how “well”/fast you can kill it. But if all you want is just to as’sess one weapon against another you can follow the logic laid out in the post below:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Ranger-Weapon-DPS-Calculations/first

Greatsword 2 was buffed since then so figures are likely a bit different now, but Sword is very likely still #1 in pure auto-attack DPS.