Guild Wars 2

As many rangers, I played neraly full gc lb/sb before the quickness nerf. After that, I tried sb/gs, it’s fun, but more in small groups than in zerg fights. Recently I started to roam in an organized group of 20+, busting other zergs. To me, sb or lb is not viable when changing positions frequently, flanking the enemy, portalbombing etc. Having a few thousand WvW badges in my bank, I decided to buy some condi gear and build around traps.

I came up with a build using three traps, axe/torch as primary and another axe on weaponswap, both axes using superior sigil of geomancy. Build + gear setup can be found here: http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/ranger/?6.3|7.1b.h1k.f.1b.h5|7.1b.h1k.0.0.0|1b.719.1b.719.1h.719.1b.719.1h.719.1b.719|41m.0.21m.0.31m.0.1h.62.1h.62.2w.0|a3.u28b.u67c.0.0|15.d|4j.50.53.52.54|e

Essentially, you have to run with the pack, diving into the enemy zerg. Throw your traps everywhere where you see some guys standing, and keep weaponswitch on cooldown for aoe bleed + fury + swiftness. Traps also work fine on defending choke points. Torch #5 also adds some burn, and fire field on demand. Since you are moving all the time during zergfights, it will hit someone everytime you use it.

I tried it for some hours this week, and it works quite well, even in pugs. Me and my friends kept track on our kills/badges during one of our organized raids, and my ranger ended up with slightly more kills than a condition-glamour mesmer and slightly less kills/badges than a condi necro.

I’d like to hear your opinion on my build. I tend to remove all healing power from my build, although Troll Unguent scales very well with it. Healing Spring is not viable, since I can’t stay inside the field for the full duration (only useful when defending some choke point in a tower/keep).

I recently got my ranger to level 80 and geared him in mostly the precision/toughness/condition dmg gear from the karma vendors in Orr. Mostly all that I do with him is WvW and I find that a trap ranger is actually quite effective in a zerg if used properly. I run shortbow as main weapon and axe/warhorn for the warhorn 5 ability to grant swiftness to the zerg and as a blast finisher as well. From my experience using this build, I find flanking a zerg that is defending a camp or trying to attack a keep is the best strategy. Run into the zerg, use entangle, throw all of your traps, then run like hell to safety and then come back with shortbow to apply more conditions. That is usually enough to disrupt the zerg’s momentum enough for your forces to rally and push them back.

My only problem that I could see with your build, at least in the link provided, was that in the Wilderness Survival Trait line I see that you reduce the cooldown of Survival Skills when you use all traps. I would just suggest changing that to Vigorous Renewal or possibly one of the other traits depending on your play style.