Guild Wars 2

I will be hitting 80 soon, and my plan is to turn my ranger into a money maker / solo farming machine, in order to gather the gold needed to gear up my next characters. This will be my first lvl 80, planning Mesmer and Guardian after this (both still low level).

This is why I am wondering, what is the best farming build for rangers?

My question now is a somewhat unconventional one. Most people asking about PvE builds mean ‘best PvE build for dungeons/fractals’. What I am looking for instead is the best build for farming solo. Perhaps dungeons are a better way of making money, but I prefer to farm solo 90% of the time simply because it allows me to go afk or be distracted as much as I like, while still making gradual progress.

My own idea was to run with either 20/20/0/0/30 and have my pet tank (but I do not know if it can keep aggro when I am in decent gear) or to just go 30/30/5/0/5 and hope I can nuke down stuff before I have to kite it too much (I hate kiting when farming, it’s time wasted and it means brain can’t go afk).

Which of these builds do you think work best? Or is there another build I should consider? And what zone is best to farm, or doesn’t it matter much where I farm?

Also, is Explorer gear worth it, or should I just go Berserker on this toon (more drops vs more kills, the eternal question)?

I am using (at 80) a 0/0/30/20/20 with rampager gear, Superior Dwayna all accross the armor, Superior Energy and Corruption on weapons, short bow, short sword and torch.
Pet Raven and Wolf. TONS of condition damage, good healing. Lot of moving when using short bow, lots of condition when using sword/torch. Spear and harpoon for underwater with shark and jelly fish. Can ‘tank’ multiple targets at once… and with all the condition damage aoe you can hurt any addons while meeleing main target.

I have tried magic find but have not seen a noticeable difference to even bother with it for farming.

Whatever you choose, I’d save the gold and stick to either karma or rare level gear. There are supposedly going to be trait/balance changes in the patch later this month so I’d wait for that before sinking any serious gold into it.

This game has built-in mechanics to prevent farming in regular pve.

You are really screwing yourself if you choose to spend hours on regular pve instead of an hour on 3-4 different dungeons and earn a lot of gold and karma, plus the tokens.

I tried farming Karka for shells during the Southsun Cove events, bought a set of rare magic find gear, and pirate runes, used buffs to reach 100% drop rate, it was still slow progress. So don’t think its worth the investment. Farm with gear/build you feel confortable with. I have a trapper ranger, and you can deal some serious condition damage with 1200+ condition damage. I run 2-3 traps and entangle with sword/torch, axe/dagger. If you want your pet to tank, take devourers. Not the hardest hitting pets, but they are really durable.

I do solo PVE farming, and it can be surprisngly profitable if you just want to be a bit zen and run around. I hate dungeons.

My current farming build I use everywhere from Orr to Frostgorge is:

0, 15, 20, 5, 30

My gear is all magic find (don’t need better stats in most PVE), and with runes of the traveller, some cheap peach tarts and magic find on my torch it adds up.

For pets I always has my river drake, he’s tanky and has a blast finisher which is great since I use torch and usually have a trap or two. The other is one of the cats, usually the jaguar or lynx.

For weapons I run with either sword/torch (for lots of single target mobs like in frostgorge), or axe/torch which gives great tagging. The other weapon slot tends to be shortbow or axe/horn with the sword/torch or greatsword if I use axe/torch. The shortbow is mainly when plinking bosses in events, it’s handy against abominations and giants in Orr.

The thing is that for good PVE roaming farming you should be close combat. Your pet will have no issue hitting targets, and with a few aoe traps and a greatsword you can cleave through mobs fast. The bows just don’t kill things fast enough, in world PVE our pets do crazy damage to try to play around with beastmaster and drag out your sword. Also, with this much magic find a lot of the money will come from rares. I have little time playing, usually an hour a night doing dailies, and I usually finds at least one rare during that time.

Good luck!

Go full berserker if you want to farm PvE or CoF, it’s the fastest way to kill mobs. You have no need for survivability in that context, it just slows you down. I’d suggest 30/30/5/0/5 (with moment of clarity) or 30/25/10/0/5 (with wilderness knowledge).

Thanks for the responses. Still haven’t been able to make my decision, but at least I see there are a lot of options.

0/10/30/0/30 P/V/T + Cleric and then use whatever weapon set you like. GS+SB is my choice…

I use rare Explores Armor, trinkets, and axe/torch with sigle of Luck and pirate runes (1 traveler) and magic find food guild banners for magic find are often placed in lions arch, Pearl inlet and just out side of lions arch to the north.

as far as build goes I don’t re-trait so what i have at the time is what i use, normally 0/20/20/0/30 or 0/0/30/10/30 (i mostly play WvWvW), i just make sure that i have “Mighty Swap” and “Commanding Voice” in the Beast mastery line.
I use duel drakes (river and reef) swap and use F2 skills on recharge, the first skill a drake uses after is tail swipe (AoE and Blast finisher).

Locations (don’t spend any longer then an hour per day in any of these) cursed shores, Malchor’s Leap, Frostgorge Sound, Southsun Cove.

I can farm quite comfortably while watching TV like this.