Guild Wars 2

Hey guys,

I was wondering what you think about the viability of a direct damage DPS crit sword ranger in PvE build that have just started using (wvw, dungeons). It has some survivability mixed in of course but not the condition damage/evasion tank build that ive seen floating around on the forums. It also has good syngery with pets (raven and drakehound/stalker) and can constantly maintain at least 5 stacks of might on the pet. I switch to longbow whenever i need aoe or to use rapid fire.

Sword/WH and LB

20/25/10/0/15

The 20 in marksmanship is for piercing arrows when AoE is needed.

Lightning reflexes/QZ/signet of renewal or hunt

Stats:

~2100 power
1775 precision (45 crit chance, 60 crit damage)
~1400 toughness
1150 vitality

Steal life on crit sigil for warhorn for some extra survivability

Is this viable or will i be too squishy? Keep in mind the evades on the sword and the sigil for lifestealing and the fact that i can switch to LB for particularly hard boss fights.

Feedback would be much appreciated

So maybe i should make this into a simpler question….in your experience, is it viable to use a sword on a ranger in dungeons, without running a tank spec?

non tank spec melee ranger in dungeons? Nope

For WvW I would change the Sigil the life steal, isn’t very effective it has 2 second cooldown, I would go with something that improves your attack (Sigil of Battle 3 Might Stacks) on your sword and your going to need more Toughness/Vita if you want to run sword/horn I would lose Traits from Power use your items to make up the extra 200 Points and put it all into Toughness. Sigil of Battle will give you 35×3 more power in your melee attack for 20 seconds and you don’t want to be in melee for very long 10 seconds at most.

Also look into food there is food that gives you 66% chance off critical to gain 325 life with no cooldown and gives you more 70+ Precision.

In regards to your pets, some Tips for WvW set your pet to Avoid Combat, when you go into melee combat hit there f2 they will auto attack your target. Pets die fast in WvW even with Traits.

Raven/Wolf is very good combat, use the Raven for melee combat it will drop that blind which will help you tank in close combat allot better, when you need to escape/down people use the wolfs F2 has same skills as Drakehound just its elite is far better then the Drakehounds. Once you do go into melee Petswap on Weapon Swap to get your 2 seconds of QZ, then follow with QZ give yourself 6 seconds. Be careful this can sometimes get you killed.

Some tips when you go into melee combat, start the fight with your (4) horn skill followed with 1 full set of your auto attack, rest after that is up to you. Your under QZ so you can do all 4 attacks in 1.5 second. Once you have ran out of QZ use your Horn (5).

Hope this helps you mate.

If you are really good at dodging with the crit dmg food u can make it work, however u will do less dmg as a full glass cannon ranger than a full tank warrior and one failed dodge and you are dead. I heard recently that there is a ranger that is playing a tanky melee ranger in lvl46+ fractals, but I don’t see the gain over other specs, does almost no dmg at all and still dies with every single kittuen up.