Guild Wars 2

Hey guys I wanted to make a ranger guide for all of our Rangers since many guides online seem outdated and don’t explain their purpose very much. This guide is for rangers interested in mostly group play whether it be defensive or offensive, as with any build skills and weapons will change based on what you are doing and I will explain it in depth. If you guys have any questions just feel free to ask either in game or here and ill try to explain as much as I can!

The build in itself:
Amarith’s WvW Ranger Build
On my guild website (better layout then here):
http://borlissavers.enjin.com/forum/m/14445395/viewthread/12701337-amariths-wvw-ranger-build-support-suppress

Breakdown of Build:

Traits: 4/0/6/4/0

Marksmanship: [ I, X ] Provides you with vulnerability stacks, +10% damage when you aren’t dodging, +5% damage all the time when using your longbow as well as +20% more range which I think explains itself. Gives +Power and Condition Duration.
Wilderness Survival: [ I, VII, XII ] Provides you with quicker endurance regeneration (basically more dodges), helps you with falling damage, gives you protection stacks on dodging, a quicker recharge for your war horn/torch skills as well as a range increase for them, another +10% damage increase when you are above 90% health and a great trait called Bark Skin which makes you and your pet take 50% less damage when you drop below 25% health, works great in WvW situations when you get focused by a warrior/thief. Gives +Toughness and Condition Damage.
Nature Magic: [ III, VI Gives you a passive heal regeneration when you drop below 75% health, increases your regenerations by 33%, shares boons you get with your pet, and gives you more protection stacks when you take more then 10% damage. Gives +Vitality and Boon Duration.

Basically these traits are for you to provide the most damage while being at a great range and if you so happen as to take damage provides you with many buffs to keep you alive and take less damage overall. I don’t go down very often with this setup when I am positioned right and not overwhelmed.

Armor: Soldiers Medium Armor, fitting you with six slots of Power/Toughness/Vitality gear. (Your main survival gear)
Runes for Armor: I prefer Ranger runes as while you are in WvW there aren’t many times unless solo that you will be sending your pet in and when you do you want to swap as soon as they get low health for as much consistent +damage as possible. Alternatives could be runes of the Scholar/Ogre both are good choices and comes down to personal preference and are all around the best runes to use.
Weapons: Berserker Longbow & Berserker Axe & Torch, swap to Sword/Warhorn if trying to catch up to a zerg/running across the map as this provides you with better solo ability if people try to take the tail end out.
Runes for Weapons: Sigil of Fire/Sigil of Torment/Sigil of Air, the reason I picked these is when you are defending/playing offensive you want to lay down as much AoE as possible to suppress targets for your group. Sigil of Fire/Torment do just that and also provide you with more tags on players to get extra loot, works perfectly with Rapid Fire & Barrage. Sigil of Air works great for single target burst damage, so its upto you at that point to mix and match.
Trinkets: Full Berserker Rings/Earrings/Amulet/Back
Gems for Trinkets: Exquisite Ruby Jewel

My main strategy when running with a group in WvW:

Offensively: When my group rushes into a group of enemy players I stand back and fire a Barrage into the enemy group, then pop Rapid Fire on a solo target. What this does is use cripple from your Barrage to slow your targets down so they cannot get away quick enough, what Rapid Fire does is allow you to crit in order to set off your weapon sigils burning foes and applying a lot of damage on multiple targets. Once this is done I usually swap to my Axe/Torch and toss the axe around to clean up anything else standing by that time as well as throw my torch to burn foes in an AoE radius. The most important part to not diei in these situations is positioning and knowing when to dodge. I cannot stress this enough because since you are a ranged class positioning is everything, while you might be somewhat tanky you cannot take hits like a guardian so running with your team threw a group of enemy players in melee range will result in you going down rather quickly. Pets here I like to use the same as my defensive strategy jungle stalker/red moa and a fern hound, the jungle stalker provides might stacks for you and your allies while they charge in and the fern hound gives a great AoE heal for people who are retreating.

Defensively: Pretty much the same, if they are attacking your castle/keep you basically sit on walls and spam Barrages, Rapid Fires, and swap weapons to throw your torch which does a lot of damage very quickly and gives you that suppressing fear only a few classes can. What I will mention here is that swapping out Signet of the Hunt for Frost Spirit is a great idea here, if you have a bigger zerg coming to your castle and you are trying to hold the castle when they are ramming gates/outside of your keep, Frost Spirit gives any players within a 1,000 foot radius a 35% chance to do 10% more damage, just buffing you and your party members to provide even more suppression fire. Best pets for this situation are a jungle stalker/red moa and a fern hound, the jungle stalker provides might stacks for you and your allies while defending and the fern hound gives a great AoE heal for when people are trying to AoE you off the wall.

Solo: When I am trying to catch up to a zerg or what not, I always try to run entangle with a raven and spider pet, it works great with your sword and war horn as you apply cripples and hold your target down while you rain fire on them with your longbow, when they get too close you swap to Sword/Warhorn and evade their attacks while doing a good amount of damage and buff yourself some. Then you can go stealth with your longbow, knock them back and rinse/repeat. It is important to note that I swap Quickening Zephyr for Signet of Renewal/Muddy Terrain when solo and swap Rampage as One for Entangle.

Summary: I just wanted to give a good update to rangers as they are usually denied as a good class in general, usually because most new people play them and haven’t learned to use them right. This is to give you an overview of my play style and what I’ve found to suit me best in a WvW situation and to give you all an insight on what to strive for as this is the best setup I have come across if you want to be a true ranger in WvW, thank you for reading and feel free to ask me any questions!

Sorry this website’s layout for posting isn’t all that great and I tried to replicate my post on my guild forums as best I could, check it out there for better viewing pleasure!

Slauterhaus.1062:

Summary: I just wanted to give a good update to rangers as they are usually denied as a good class in general, usually because most new people play them and haven’t learned to use them right. This is to give you an overview of my play style and what I’ve found to suit me best in a WvW situation and to give you all an insight on what to strive for as this is the best setup I have come across if you want to be a true ranger in WvW, thank you for reading and feel free to ask me any questions!

I’m sorry to contradict you, but your build is part of the reason, ragers are denied as a good class in WvW.

For start I want to tell you what you did right in this build and why you feel more comfortable in WvW than before:
- You don’t run full berserker stats so you don’t drop in the first push.
- You use Rampage as One for stability so it is harder for the enemy to focus you in the first 20s of a fight.
- You try to stay outside the melee fight with your ranged weapon.

But this does’t make your build good. There is very much you can improve.

Firstly even though you use berserker stats your damage is poor compared to other classes. Mainly because you use a longbow. The problem with the longbow is: Without piercing arrows it hits only one target except with barrage. But barrage roots you on one spot wich is also bad for fighting. Your axe does at least 3 times the damage, because it hits 3 targets and also you throw 3 axes in the time you shoot one arrow.

Secondly your build uses hardly any support a ranger can provide. You only give a waterfield you cannot even blast and might and regeneration by your squishy pets. Your pet dies away in seconds if you don’t keep it passive in a fight, but if you keep it passive you will loose part of your potential damage. Your torch might be usefull for stacking might, but as you cannot blast it, it is no help at all. It also does hardly any damage because the firefield lays down right to your feet but you keep standing away from the enemy.

WvW in larger groups ist about adding up support skills for the team, avoiding damage by standing close to each other and doing high damage to as many targets as possible. None of these points fit to your build. Ranger has so much potential of support: Spotter, Signet of Renewal, Firefield, Waterfield, Swiftness and Regeneration by Shouts, Poison fields, AOE-Healing by pet F2, Spirits (but those die too fast in bigger fights), …

Thirdly your defensive part of your build is not good. Instead of soldiers and berserker I would advice you to use knight and cavalier as toughness in WvW is much better than vitality because on long fights healing will give you a higher percentage of your life back. If you want more damage you could add some assasin or berserker, but this will lower your survivability. Also you lack condition remove. As most smallscale and some bigger groups run condition damage, you would simply die away by the condition damage once you are outside your waterfield. And sometimes even your waterfield can’t handle the condition impact.

I know my criticism might sound hard to you, but there is a lot one has to change in the build when coming from PvE to WvW with a ranger. You are still on the very start of it. You did the first step by thinking about your build. Go on and maybe you will become a real help for your sever and your guild.

Edit- Some more advice: Play more with melee weapons. They do more damage an give you some evades. Also switch of auto-targeting and auto-attack for the sword an with some training you will find it quite usefull for fighting. With melee weapons use tankier pets like drakes or even bears. Drakes will blast combo-fields and bears heal themselves while attacking. In midscale fights sometimes pigs and hounds work as well and they also have a leap for combo. Cats, birds, moas and spiders are definitely too squshy for bigger fights when they are not traited in beastmastery.

Oak da Vite.9054:

Cats, birds, moas and spiders are definitely too squshy for bigger fights when they are not traited in beastmastery.

That’s usually true but I think something buggy is happening with pets right now. My wolf/hound will go down in 2 hits but my moa is soaking up damage like a boss.

This build has basically no condi clear. The condi clear from spring wont be enough to keep you up against a condi spam necro or theif, or any condi spam class. This is a big problem… especially in WvW…

SoS is not overly effective, especially untraited, and there are much better options.

A/T are primarily condition weapons and you are specced into power. Axe is OK with power being hybrid, but not great. Its good at tagging multiple targets with AA for getting bags in zergs, but the power damage is quite a lot worse than other weapons, and the other skills on axe apply conditions. Torch is pure condition and is basically useless on a power set aside from the fire field for stacking might, but you dont have a blast to do so. Your best bet for an offhand set would either be GS, S/WH or S/D. All of those combinations have much better defensive/mobility options built in opposed to A/T and do superior power based damage.

Gear wise, you are better off going knights than PVT. Vitality is almost useless for most builds, unless your a necro stacking 30+k health with toughness to boot, and usually they go dire because they can spec condi and still have hard hitting conditions which they can spam. Toughness is generally better, which PVT has, and so does knights, but vitality increases your health pool which decreases the effectiveness of your heals. Sure you have more health in PVT, and you heal for the same amount, but you heal for a lesser % of your health pool, making it harder to get back to max health. So you are better off maximising damage. If you want a higher effective health pool, get some healing power.

Trait wise your all over the place. Power line, it is basically mandatory to take read the wind grandmaster if you plan to fight from 1500 in order to effectively hit targets, otherwise you will often miss your target and you are better off sticking to 1200 and taking peircing instead. WS soften the fall is basically useless. If you know the terrain, you shouldnt have problems navigating WvW and should know what you can drop from and what will kill you. Its generally a bad idea to retreat or chase enemies off cliffs. If an enemy jumps off a cliff and survives, chances are hes super low, and with 1500 range +RTW, you should be able to hit him and finnish him off from the top of the cliff. There are also much better traits to take in this slot. Emapthic bond > Bark skin. Also, whats the point in taking a trait that increases regen, when the only regen you get is a small amount from spring while you stand in the AOE, and some from the minor trait. You have no healing power to scale it so its not very effective and no other sources of regen or healing, making that a wasted trait. Basically your wasting a trait two a short lasting forms of regen, one being positional (need to be in AoE on pulse) and another which is circumstantial and a one off.

I see your build and I raise with my own version of ‘back line support’. Naturally a few things can be modified to suit the situation, but since your post refers to a back line kind of sniper then here you go. Note that unlike your build I choose greatsword for those melee-must moments. It has much more effectiveness that axe/torch because axe/torch leaves you wide open due to it’s purely offensive value. Like some of the peeps above suggested you should do your best not to be 100% backline support, being around your allies is crucial for damage support, boon sharing, etc (warnhorn for the win!) but I get it, there are times when being efficient as a sniper and backline support will be necessary.

Now I like where you’re going with your build but you can still improve upon it so keep up the good stuff.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJATRjMq0xaLLmsw1ag9gadAUAndrhw9Wcwt9JP5YTA-TVDEABaq+DEHQAGOCCPp8bp9HWRTgEXAgO0BAwDA4hDFQDHgADVC6mGGCBwaBA-w

I hope this helps!

After seeing LB+untraited SoS, I know there is no need to continue to check the rest of the build. I guess OP played in some bottom servers which only has some occasional pug fights. Come to Top 6 servers and test your build vs those well-organized teams, no matter you atk or run away, feel what is called being-melt instantly.

Signet build without it traited seems like a wasted opportunity. Also need Lightning reflexes in there somewhere.

Torment sigils are very expensive, are they worth it? I dont want to buy at those prices heh.