Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playing Ranger for awhile now and I believe the greatsword is my favorite weapon. Does anyone have any suggestion on which traits to focus heavily on with the greatsword? I basically want to output a lot of damage while taking a lot as well. Guess you could say I want to be a tank with a pet haha. And what type of weapon is a good backup weapon when things get too hot? Also, I tend to use troll ungeunt as a heal. Seems like this is the best for up close combat but has anyone had a better experience with the Healing Spring?

The only thing I could really suggest is a shortbow for ranged combat. It’s got a fast auto-attack rate and a quick escape ability that should get you safely out of range if you’re taking too much melee damage and essentially gives you an extra dodge ability.

ituhata.6830:

The only thing I could really suggest is a shortbow for ranged combat. It’s got a fast auto-attack rate and a quick escape ability that should get you safely out of range if you’re taking too much melee damage and essentially gives you an extra dodge ability.

Yea I think I will end up using the Short bow for the quick escapes. Any tips on trait spending?

I’m a big fan of conditions so here’s what I might do when I start playing ranger.

Between you and your pet I think you can stack bleed pretty high. Also, if you roll with a short bow as your secondary you can open with crossfire and poison volley then swap to great sword and use swoop then maul. If you have an eagle or hawk they have a bleed move with a 6 second cool down.

You’ll want to add a little toughness to keep you and your pet alive. This is just one approach though, maybe you like more direct damage abilities.

Oh okay. So the toughness trait affects my pet as well? Is this the case with every trait?

Hm now that I think about it I just assumed traits affected pets too… I’ll look into it.

If so, that would be reallllly sweet. It would take a lot of my worrying away that I should put sufficient points into Beast Mastery.

Yes, I checked the wiki and it states that pet’s stats are based off that of the player. You can check out the wiki to do a little theory crafting if it pleases you, but it looks like birds are focused mainly around precision (which means they are critical hitters). Maybe instead of condition damage you would want to stack up precision and crit damage?

Ah cool. Thanks I appreciate the input a lot. I might stack up power and toughness then. If I can stay alive i’m not too worried about my critical chance as long as I deliver enough strength behind each swing,

I’m not in any way pro so take it with a grain of salt, but i tend to think skirmishing is a trait that goes well with shortbow users. Sigil of the Hunt and Sigil of Stone are pretty good for keeping you mobile and adding a little toughness.

It should be noted that the greatsword does very low damage — much less than sword or shortbow, for example. Its advantages are

• AoE (relative to shortbow) — it hits 3 targets.
• Safety (relative to sword) — automatic evasion on third attack, and does not lock out movement/dodging like sword does.

In light of this, I think it makes more sense to pair the greatsword with a high damage option, rather than a “safe” option. Of course, the shortbow, which you seem to be leaning toward, is such an option, so that works.

Awesome, thanks for all the feedback. Which weapon besides the shortbow would you recommend for the secondary then?

They nerfed the hell out of Greatsword damage during the beta. It’s a crying shame, because it’s the most fun weapon in the game to use, in my opinion. It’s pretty counterintuitve that a melee weapon is doing less damage than every ranged weapon for the class, and I suspect the devs are aware of it. I think it’s likely to get some damage buffs in the near future.

In the meanwhile, the most popular secondary weapon set for a Ranger is Axe/Warhorn. Axe 1 hits multiple targets, Axe 2 gives you an attack that stacks multiple bleeds, Axe 3 gives you a ranged slow, Warhorn 4 does a very nice amount of damage, and, most importantly, Warhorn 5 gives you an AoE Swiftness/Might/Fury buff that lasts for 15 seconds on a 35 second cooldown.

I can’t imagine playing a build that doesn’t run at least Warhorn in one of its weapon slots. It’s amazing.

RAPIDEXCHANGE.8417:

Awesome, thanks for all the feedback. Which weapon besides the shortbow would you recommend for the secondary then?

I’d say shortbow or sword. I’m not sure I’d pair it with axe, just because axe also does low damage against single targets (when it can’t bounce), but with a high damage pet it might not matter. Personally I’ve been using sword primary with greatsword secondary, but sword can be pretty difficult/painful to use with the #1 locking out movement and dodging, so you might not like it.

Edit: just a note, I’ve measured DPS figures for sword, greatsword, and shortbow, but not for axe, so I could be wrong about that claim.