Disclaimer
This is guide with some builds (power builds) made by a ranger for rangers; only ranger love here. If you are looking for some motivation to play ranger this is your place but if you are looking this guide with the aim to sho, more, your hate against ranger please leave because you are not welcome. Ranger is a class as others and can do the same things as others can; we aren’t under no one.
Ranger Power Build
Hello everyone, i decided to start this thread because i think is really necessary to show everyone who’s in looking for a ranger build that we aren’t only available in condition build (spirit build everywhere!) but we can also deal massive damage with our power!
Are you looking for a ranger build? Are you looking for a fun build? Are you looking for a nice guide of what can we do? That’s your thread then. Enjoy.
1. Why power over condition?
Condition builds are really strong but they have some problems: they need to focus on a single target (maybe 2-3 but with loss of damage), they have to avoid pve because of condition spamming (and so loss of damage, again) and, above all, they are useless against classes with condition removers!
Power build is, for definition, a build based on power and raw damage and the cons of this kind of builds are only two: armor and damage reducers.
2. Pros of power build
As said above, power builds are based on direct damage so the main difference between condition and power build is that condition builds can carry out a lot of little damages while power build can carry out some great numbers (do you want an example? Rapid Fire = 10k+ damage). The aim of power build is to deal massive damage and reduce enemies hp as fast as possible in order to avoid any kind of damage and use all it’s burst capacity in a single time.
3. Types of power builds
The most common power build is the one based on full berserker gear (usually named “zerker build” and used to roam in WvW) but this one, while is able to deal massive damage, is really easy to burst down especially if you are playing in pve or in WvW (zerg). So this isn’t the type of build i’ll talk about since i hate to become butter under enemy attack and i think is better to get defense, when needed, and offense, as more as possible without go full zerker.
4. Is possible to power build a ranger and get damage and resistance at same time?
Of course, this is the aim of this thread. It’s possible and ranger is a great class if you are looking for fun and competitive pvp at same time. The following one is a power build based on Longbow and Greatsword and it’s able to deal massive damage and give us, at the same time, resistance and tons of utility tools.
5. What about the build?
This build is based on LB/GS setup and is able to kill someone really quickly while maintaining 1600 toughness, 18k hp, condition removers, escape ability, aoe damage, combo field and sustained damage and a massive 2365 base power. All what you need to know, for now, is that this build is able to deal 10k + damage with rapid fire (5k+ with maul) and can walk in the middle of a zerg while drinking a coffee for 6 seconds.
6. When position is all
This build is not based on the “piercing arrows” trait because it’s really hard to manage and is very important to know your landscape before to start a match. Anyway if you are able to manage this grat surce of dps (on multiple target) you can use it. Also know how to place yourselvess and your skills is really important: learn the best place to use you barrage (on a bridge, under a tunnel or over a zerged area), learn when to use “point blank shot” to escape (near a cliff or jump over a clif pointing your enemy and the knock back him while on the top… it’s only matter of how many fun you want to have ).
You position is also really important; you are a ranger so you have to stay at range except for some burst combos and fight ends (i’ll talk about later) but remember that stay to range is really important for us (we get a 1500 range with “eagle eye” trait and don’t understand those who say "at 1500 range is really easy to dodge and avoid an arrow… because you have 2 dodges… we have unlimited arrows and there aren’t enemy skills which can hit us at 1500 range ) so keep the distance high as more as possible.
(edited by Kjeldoran.3849)