Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone
I’m happy to bring you the 5th installment of our GW2 build/guide series -available now on the eSports Gaming youtube channel. This is the 1st one we’ve done for the Ranger class, so let us know what you think!
This episode features Ovi (NA) and goes over the Beastmaster build/playstyle for Ranger. The video covers Trait choices, Utility skills, Runes/Sigils, and general playstyle/rotations -with a few tips/tricks thrown in for good measure (as always).
If you’ve been wanting to learn how to play BM Ranger, this is your chance!

eSports Gaming Ranger BM Build/Guide ft. Ovi
Be sure to let us know who you’d like to see on the show next, as well as which classes/builds you want to learn!

we realize that ranger may not be as popular at the moment in some regions, but we urge players to try it before writing it off completely. Also, Ovi was reluctant to share his main BM build for fear of having it nerfed, this is simply the “general” BM build that most people are running at the moment.

Very nice guide, well done Ovi

Will definitely try this build on my Ranger. Thanks for the effort!

Your channel is becoming a great source for new players who are looking for proven tournament builds.

If the GW2 community was more activity on Youtube, I think more people would notice the spvp side!

emphatic bond transfers 3 conditions every 10 seconds to your pet, not two.
you lack teamfight utility – or even small skirmish utility, there is just no real reason to not run healing spring in any kind of teamsetup – the IV trait in wilderness survival gives vigor on healing and ticks on every procc of healing spring, thus granting 15 sec water field, aoe condi clearing, aoe vigor ( about 18~ seconds if you stand in it for whole duration) and aoe regeneration that gets applied with your healing power stats to your allies, furthermore healing spring is nearly instant cast, while TU takes 1 second to cast.
oakheart salve is an ok choice – think you still get more from taking offhand training and running axe/torch and sword/dagger as it buffs both offense and defense at the same time –
signet of the hunt seems wasted when you run the pet mobility training, which i don’t like at all. give frosttrap a try – it’s a great combo field that you can utilize among water and firefield.
nature’s bounty is great – sometimes nature’s protection might be a better choice though.
mighty swap is not as good anymore – try rending attacks, it applies way more pressure from the jaguar.
lightning reflexes is ok – but signet of renewal is better, so much more teamfight utility – oh necro just used epidemic mid while you assault far, hit signet, swap pet and win.
the spirit elite is great.
going 10 pts into skirmish can be decent additional pressure if you run the crit dmg trait – it doesn’t work with f2 abilities though.
you can put 10 more pts into bm to buff your pet further and get passive regeneration from natural healing, or go 10 more into nature magic to grap vengeful spirits ( to get 3 rezzes out of the spirit) or natures protection.
dwayna is a great choice, if you want to add more utility go with mercy and if you want to get both decent offense and defense again, go for forge.

Some valid points Battosai, but I don’t quite follow your reasoning for a few. Healing spring is nice when it comes to team fights but not as effective in 1v1’s or smaller skirmishes as the heal it provides you with is 6k max and that’s with a clerics amulet. The extra regen is nice but unnecessary with the traits and runes in the build, and of course even if I stack all that duration it’s rare for regen to stay on me for full duration and not get stripped, diminishing the 5k heal I would get for it if fully traited into heal. Trolls heals for 9k, can’t be stripped, tics per second as opposed to a burst heal which is perfect for such a tanky build with already many sources of natural regen on top. Cast time is not an issue as it is rarely interrupted with decent positioning.
- The IV trait granting vigor on heal is very nice, especially with the tic from spring but not as valuable when bringing Lightning Reflexes which already grants 11 seconds of vigor. LR is priceless considering the only time you would be dying on this build is when your mobility is cut down drastically. When immobilized it provides an extra dodge excluding sword two and three and short bow 3 which is highly necessary since most will be used on cooldown. For those who don’t know what I mean by extra dodge, you can not dodge when immobilized but can still activate skills that provide a dodge making you invulnerable on the spot.
- As for your choice in weapons axe torch and sword dagger? I could understand sword dagger but never dropping a shortbow for an axe and torch, the shortbow utility is far too strong, 10 second poison, dodge + swiftness, bleed on properly positioned auto attacks, snare, and an interrupt which is crucial to stopping allies from being stomped and enemies from rezzing.
- Signet of the Hunt, and agility training I completely agree with on this build, it was a mishap on my part when linking this old build with some new more practical flare. I would bring agility training alone and would not take signet of the hunt prior to quickness nerf I would have QZ for the 5 second stomps and rezzes, as well as the strong burst. Now QZ is not worth bringing for clear reasons.

Hmm, I find dropping Natural Healing for 10 points in Skirmishing rather weird (if you’re wanting 10 points in Natures, switch to Birds instead and use their Vigor Talent on swap)

If you want Cats switch the 10 points from Natures to Skirmishing for the 30% crit talent.

Shortbow with Shamans is rather mediocre damage, Against most people you’re not going to be hitting them all that often with the back attack, and you already have a fairly good poison chain in sword/dagger (which is why you do Axe/Torch as your secondary)

It also allows you to run Offhand Training as a talent (4 abilities instead of two if you ran Sword/Torch with Shortbow for example)

Plus it allows you to do Sigil of Geomancy on both weapon sets while maintaining corruption sigil as well. You gain a 6 Second Duration Chill, and a Weakness by going axe/torch as well.

That Sigil of Geomancy on weaponswap adds up as well, Since we’re talking about a PBAE 3 stack bleed that lasts 5 seconds I think base.

Lightning/Signet of Hunt/Signet of Wild are good though since you don’t have access to racials.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/BM-Bunker-Build-Guide/first#post1854612

axe is actually a really strong defensive weapon, with chill and weakness on #3, combine it with frosttrap and you can skip your hydromancy sigil and use geomancy for more pressure. the pressure coming from bonfire on point while being traited is amazing.
shortbow is a good weapon ( a hybrid with carrion will give huge pressure, with shaman it’s kinda lacking imo ) , but the pressure of axe/torch on point is the highest you can get.
LR is good, but i only run it in a semi-trapper build with vipers nest and flame trap. with utilizing the 3 100% projectile finishers the shortbow provides + sword/dagger ( dagger #5 is 100% projectile finisher as well), you can keep 9-10 seconds of burning on a target with one flame trap, permanent poison, loads of evades and really high pressure, but that’s a different build.
i think the signet is better than LR in that build, drop TU, and use your leap finisher on sword to get 1797 extra healing with 944 healing power ( which you have running the build i suggested) without adding in life sigil.
so doing a basic combo like torch #4, axe#3 into wolf kd, axe#2, petswap to jaguar + f2 + weaponswap(with geomancy) and dagger#5, then #4 ( keep sword #3 for dodging important stuff, not for dps due to high cd) will apply 11 bleeding stacks alone from yourself, burning (8 seconds with forge + smoldering),cripple, chill, weakness, poison and your jaguar can sustain around 5-10 bleedingstacks himself.
it’s just some basic stuff – i can see the use of TU if you solely go for 1v1 and play against teams that don’t have that much access to high burst damage, but healing spring is just the best heal in game – by far. combo it with ele, thief and you will survive forever.
you can run search and rescue with shout cd and mercy runes + SoR + healingspring to have a great teamfight support setup.
i can see the build having pressure – but i think you won’t lose much by trying what i suggested, while adding way more teamfight/skirmish utility and synergy.

@ xsorus – geomancy lasts 7 seconds.

That’s a very interesting spec, far too reliant on close range combat however making it a unnecessary target. Weapon swap bleed is also reliant on close range, the point of taking a bow is putting distance while pet just hammers from melee. Even with all the dodges and toughness the close range fighting seems like a deterrent. I’ll try the build out myself though, it certainly looks fun.

Battosai.5620:

axe is actually a really strong defensive weapon, with chill and weakness on #3, combine it with frosttrap and you can skip your hydromancy sigil and use geomancy for more pressure. the pressure coming from bonfire on point while being traited is amazing.
shortbow is a good weapon ( a hybrid with carrion will give huge pressure, with shaman it’s kinda lacking imo ) , but the pressure of axe/torch on point is the highest you can get.
LR is good, but i only run it in a semi-trapper build with vipers nest and flame trap. with utilizing the 3 100% projectile finishers the shortbow provides + sword/dagger ( dagger #5 is 100% projectile finisher as well), you can keep 9-10 seconds of burning on a target with one flame trap, permanent poison, loads of evades and really high pressure, but that’s a different build.
i think the signet is better than LR in that build, drop TU, and use your leap finisher on sword to get 1797 extra healing with 944 healing power ( which you have running the build i suggested) without adding in life sigil.
so doing a basic combo like torch #4, axe#3 into wolf kd, axe#2, petswap to jaguar + f2 + weaponswap(with geomancy) and dagger#5, then #4 ( keep sword #3 for dodging important stuff, not for dps due to high cd) will apply 11 bleeding stacks alone from yourself, burning (8 seconds with forge + smoldering),cripple, chill, weakness, poison and your jaguar can sustain around 5-10 bleedingstacks himself.
it’s just some basic stuff – i can see the use of TU if you solely go for 1v1 and play against teams that don’t have that much access to high burst damage, but healing spring is just the best heal in game – by far. combo it with ele, thief and you will survive forever.
you can run search and rescue with shout cd and mercy runes + SoR + healingspring to have a great teamfight support setup.
i can see the build having pressure – but i think you won’t lose much by trying what i suggested, while adding way more teamfight/skirmish utility and synergy.

@ xsorus – geomancy lasts 7 seconds.

is it 7 seconds? never really paid attention to how long it really lasted as I run Veggie Pizza and couldn’t accurately say how much.

But yea 7 second PBAE bleed is very powerful.

Ovi.5473:

That’s a very interesting spec, far too reliant on close range combat however making it a unnecessary target. Weapon swap bleed is also reliant on close range, the point of taking a bow is putting distance while pet just hammers from melee. Even with all the dodges and toughness the close range fighting seems like a deterrent. I’ll try the build out myself though, it certainly looks fun.

You’d be surprised how much damage you can take with 0/0/30/10/30 build using Shamans with Birds.

2 people is pretty managable, 3 you’ll probably die but it’ll take a bit.

Good discussion guys!

Its good to discuss builds. However all points which Battosai brought into the discussion are true. Actually he was one of the first, who brought up the idea of a deffinsive ranger. I watched the entire video and think there were some mistakes. Alot of traits and utilities depend on personal preferences but some combinations were unfortunate choices (for me).
As Battosai said Ranger lacks in teamfight and since staying on closepoint while a midfight is u kitten omehow stupid, it is necessary to bring up some good utilities. Signet of renewal is a very good condition cleans since it removes all conditions from all allies around the pet. The perfect counter for Epidemic as said above. In addition it is a stun and immobilize breaker! So you dont have to waste a trait (on a 90 sec cd) for that. My experience with troll urgent is that it is probably better against ele’s and other non burst classes due to the shorter cd but lacks when you have to fight against two burst classes. Healing spring is far better for node defending. A lot of rangers do not use the leap finishers which enable nearly the same heal as with troll urgent + the vigor trait it is probably the best combo field ingame and it has a way shorter cast time than troll urgent. So interruption should never be a problem.
The only thing I like to disagree is the frost trap. I recognised that untraited traps are somehow unpredictable. If an enemy runs through my untraited frost trap it gets triggerd but chill is not applied to him – This happens after the second tick. That is were I prefer a second stun breaker or Signet of the hunt (Depending on the team combo).
I mainly run with this BM build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQRAnf8YjEVV29VKWs2Bi2DNZeM9UkeA4UMK/XhSkA;TsAg2CroAzAmAMLYOwkgt+YvwUAA

Lighting reflexes sometimes get exchanged Signet of the Hunt when I run with Bird / Jaguar combo instead of Wolf/Jaguar. Also traits which I left empty will be adjusted to that. On axe I use either a second energy sigil or geomancy sigil.

However I rarely run BM in tourneys, despite you see more and more of them. Main reason is trappers still have more group support . Especially on spirit watch it is the only counter for rangers against this block orb capping guardians/ele’s