Guild Wars 2

I’ve finally been able to find a Profession I enjoy (Ranger), and have begun to slow process of leveling and obtaining Exotics for when I hit 80. I’ve had several people give me suggestions on how to gear (Full Berserker/Knight/Celestial, etc.). One method that was told to me actually caught my eye a bit:

All armor: Majority Offfense stats
All accessories: Majority defense stats
Weapons: Legendary

I am planning to be Longbow/Greatsword, and so I have a decent idea of what generic gear to look for, and a few ideas for what Runes and Sigils.

But as the topic says, how do you set up your character? Curious as to how the rest of the populace goes.

Firstly realize that legendaries have the same stats as exotic weapons. This is common knowledge, I think, but it’s always safe to make sure. (Even when one player refused to believe me, insulted me for “spreading false information” when I gave him wiki info and offered to take screencaps for proof, and whined about how Anet was forcing him to get a legendary for the stats when he didn’t want the skin… I’m just going to believe he was a major troll.)

Anyway, to answer the original question- I have two eles, a sylvari and a charr. The charr ele (my first one) has a mix of Soldier and Knight gear with zerker weapons, and is primarily a defensive character. She runs the 0/10/0/30/30 bunker build and is my go-to when I want to solo things that are not meant to be soloed.

My more recent ele, the sylvari, is more or less balanced in gear- her overall leaning towards offense or defense depends on her build, with most of the builds I use on her being offensive. I have her set up as:

Armor: Knight with boon duration runes
Weapons: Soldier, Sigils of Stamina/Energy
Trinkets: Backpiece is currently a rare Berserker piece with a beryl (valkyrie stat) orb, the rest are zerker Ascended pieces with some vitality.

I am considering getting her a full zerker set to play around with, but I may sit on that decision for a few months- if tengu comes out, chances are I’ll make a full zerker tengu ele to complete my trio.

Well one thing to be mindful of is that due to the way the stats are rounded you get a higher return on Crit Damage from trinkets than armor. So I wouldn’t load up armor with Off and trinkets with Def gear. Likely the other way around, if you were gonna split it.

I think when I was told Legendaries, it was because they had Soldier stats. After finding the text doc that I typed when I was chatting with people, these are exactly what they suggested for my Ranger for “Standard” play

Armor: Knights or Cavaliers
Accessories: Valkyrie or Berserker
Weapon: Sentinels or Berserker until Legendary. Solider optional for familiarity.
Runes: 6/6 Eagle, or 5/6 Eagle and 2/6 Mesmer

What I don’t understand, is that does the Rune in the Aqua Breather remain active out of water? And do the stats of Aquatic weapons remain active out of water as well? And when it comes to being submerged, what gear does or does not come into account?

Regarding underwater gear, when you go underwater, the following gear pieces are counted:

-Underwater weapon
-Aqua breather
-Chest, shoulders, hands, legs, and boots (not helm)

Above water, your aqua breather and its rune, as well as your underwater weapons and their sigils, do not count. The rune in the aqua breather is to replace the rune in your helm, as your helm is not counted when you go underwater.

EDIT: also, get a legendary only if you like how it looks. Way easier to just get a normal exotic Soldier weapon, especially with Badges of Honor being thrown everywhere for achievements.

On my exotic Ranger armour I have various combinations of the power, precision, cond. damage and critical damage across the six pieces, and for all ascended rings and accessories all have a heavier weighting on toughness and precison.

A word of advice, hopefully it helps.
Save up your karma, and once you reach 80… guest to a server that has Temple of Balthazar open and just get all your cavalier’s accessories there.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tactician_Deathstrider
(Last 4 items in that list)

As for armor, buy it in wvw, or on trading post that is level 78-79 exotic. My level 80s berserker armor is either just under level 80 trading post bought armor, or wvw bought armor using badges and gold. I’m a cheapskate.

As someone posted above, trinkets should be offensive, armour and weapons can be a mix of offense and defense.

Armour
Many players have multiple armour sets, In my case. both my ranger and guardian have a mixed armour set of Knight and Valkyrie (3 pieces of each) for general open world activities. However, the ranger set had runes of the ranger and the guardian set have runes of the soldier.

Each has a 2nd armour set of full solider stats (p/v/t) with runes of melandru. My guardian uses this for certain dungeon content, my rangers used this for certain open world bosses.

Trinkets
My ranger uses a mix of Knight and Valkyrie with ruby jewels. My guardian uses a full set of ascended Beserker trinkets

Weapons
All my ranger weapons are Beserker, except for my shortbow which is Rampager. I mainly run with dual bows (LB/SB) with sigils of battle and swap them a lot to keep stacks of might up on both my toon and pet

All my guardian weapons are Knight. I mainly use GS, with sigil of strength, and Staff, with sigil of fire, in open world. When using my main and off-hand weapons sets, my main hand weapons has sigil of strength and off-hand has sigil of accuracy.

If you are going to get Magic Find, Boon Duration, or Critical Damage in your gear, remember that (unless you’re going for a Speedrun build), your Chest/Helmet/Pants should NOT maintain those stats. They offer the least stat points per Critical Damage (unless you’re getting Celestial).

Since you’re most likely new to the game (at least, in terms of the endgame finesse of skill/knowledge, you may have near a hundred hours played), it’s probably best to stick with tankier stats at first.

Two good sets are Knight and Soldier stats. Between these two, you can actually mix and match instead of just going full on one. The main reason why you should start with a Knight/Soldier set as your first is that when you start gearing up your other sets, if you end up being too squishy, you can always trade one or two pieces to make yourself a little tankier if you’re too weak (or if you’re dying too much in a dungeon, just swap armors)!

Accessories (at this point) should just be green as they’re cheap and replaceable (yes, they give the most stats, but unless you have spare money, they’re hard to get exotic versions of. That, and you don’t really want to get in the habit of replacing them too often, because the Ascended are a pain.)

Losing my train of thought here, but my final point is:

IGNORE LEGENDARIES AT ALL COST UNTIL YOU THINK YOU KNOW YOUR PROFESSION WELL.

I’m not sure of the names still, but on my PvE ranger I’m going for power, enough precision to get about 33% critical hits and then a mix of toughness and condition damage. To go with a longbow/sword & torch build with traps.

Before anyone says anything it’s a work in progress so I’m not suggesting this is definitely a good build, it’s just what I’m trying at the moment.

But my thinking is that reasonable toughness + a signet to remove conditions + staying at range and/or dodging covers defense in most situations, power is always useful and 1 in 3 critial hits is a nice bonus to that, even without extra crit damage (although I might add some later if necessary) and then the condition damage is because I like using conditions.

Going for 4 stats on a Ranger isn’t really that optimal. I can see where you’re heading with the build, but it’s harder to optimize stats when hopping between 4.

This is all Theorycrafting:

Without going into traits or food, I was able to whip up a few gearsets on a Ranger. For Trinkets, I have an Ascended Knight (Toughness, Power, Precision) Amulet. Everything else (trinket-wise) is Cavalier (Toughness, Power, Critical Damage).

Armor, I have Knight (Toughness, Power, Precision) Helm, Chest, and Legs. Shoulders/Gloves/Boots I started with Rampagers (Precision, Power, Condition Damage), but it didn’t offer enough Condition Damage to be useful, so I swapped it to Berserker (Power, Precision, Critical Damage).

For Weapons, I have Berserker (Power, Precision, Critical Damage).

Your main stats are… 1845 Power, 1437 Precision, 1699 Toughness, 62% Critical Damage, 28.81% Critical Chance, 2763 Armor, 15082 Health. (Yes, this is base health).

The reason why I didn’t invest into Vitality is because you said you would be running condition removal and you sound like you’re going to be range. Running Toughness instead is an optimal choice since it reduces damage you take, but keeps your heals strong (since having a higher health pool means you have to heal more for the same % health).

Your damage reduction is at 33.35% but your critical chance isn’t. However, with a Sigil of Accuracy (+5% Critical Chance), your Critical Chance will become 33.81% before Traits. That will give you your intended 1/3 crit rate. You also have a decent amount of Power to back it up and a sizable amount of Toughness.

A link to the referenced armor set is found here

I used Ruby Orbs because they are cheap alternatives and offer the most critical damage. If you wish to have more pure stats, run 5x Runes of the Mesmer and 1x any Rune. If you wish to have -inserteffecthere- use -insertrunehere-.

The reason I did not choose to include your condition damage is that, from an entirely gear standpoint, it’s hard to put in enough condition damage to make an impact such that it’s worth it to override bleeds given by someone who’s actually a Condition Damage dealer. Now, you might use your Shortbow/Dagger and end up bleeding/poisoning, anyways, but keep in mind that Hybrid is [almost] always subpar.

Thanks everyone for your input. I think what I’ve decided to go Berserker Weapons, Knight/Valk trinkets, and Soldier armor until I get a full hang of things. Then Knight/Valk Armor with Berserker Trinkets. Solider weapons as a finisher too. This just seems to be a good mix I think for when I start doing Fractals and more world events.

Thank you all very much for your time and input. I am also now back on the fence of Longbow/Greatsword vs Shortbow/Sword+Dagger. I think I need to go more for COndition damage if I do the latter.