Guild Wars 2

Hello, I’m a new 80 ranger. I come from playing a hunter in WoW and a bounty hunter in SW: TOR. Now that I’ve hit 80 I want a build that optimizes damage, though in this game personal survivability seems to be a must as well. I am having problems finding the best build. In WoW and SW:TOR there was always someone crunching the numbers and people were posting versions of the best options for talent trees.

On this forum so far I’ve seen several people saying “I like this build” when posting about talents. But I want the OPTIMAL build. Someone has to have done the math. I am looking for an optimal talent build for PvE and one for PvP. Can anyone help me with this or point me in the right direction? I am not interested in just making up own build and hoping that’s good enough. I am trying to min/max.

Please help.

See there’s your problem there is no “Optimal” or “Best” build. Its about what you like. If you like melee find which talents go well for whatever weapon you like. If you want a ranged weapon then find talents that support your ranged weapon. If you want to have your pet do most of your damage find talents that support your pet.

Also if you can’t micromanage your pet then roll another class because your pet REGARDLESS of spec does a good chunk of your damage and a dead pet is a useless pet.

So personally, I run the viable trap ranger with one switch. I go sword warhorn and short ow, with protect me/ signet of the hunt, Flame trap, spike trap and rampage as one. I go protect me in pvp to negate burst and signet of the hunt for general mapping for pve. My traits are 0/30/30/0/10 and gear with precision, cd, and toughness. Get crit damage, precision and toughness in your accessories and use drake/lynx for confusion/bleeding for pve and two bears (polar and brown) for pvp for tankiness. Get the trait for ground targeting traps and you should be set

Well the fact is, the numbers have to crunch a certain way. The talents are very ambiguous much of the time. For example, is it better to take a talent that makes my pet do more damage or to load more points into Marksmanship for the extra Precision and Power? Well I don’t know because I don’t know which mathematically does more damage.

I am positive that the “top” rangers have found certain builds that work better than others, and those builds are what I am looking for. Math is math.

Hi, here are some builds you can try out:
This is a power crit build, buffing the pet, because you shouldn’t really forget it. You get power, precision and critical damage, which you want. That’s why your armor will be full Berserker’s. You will use SB for max dps, as SB has the fastest attack speed. When you know you can survive melee, switch to Sword and slash away (remember to put auto attack off so you can dodge). I usually get maybe 1k-1,2k direct dmg in front of the foe per arrow (foe a normal undead in Cursed Shore). I currently use this one.
http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/ranger#19|0|1242|11831|4253|3875|1888|20|825|822|0|30|1328|827|2348|5|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|15|2343|0|0|2|15|5|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

This is basically the same as the upper one, but it increases your damage, but makes the pet a bit weaker and squishier.I usually get maybe 1,2k-1,3k direct dmg in front of the foe per arrow (foe a normal undead in Cursed Shore).
http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/ranger#19|0|1242|11831|4253|3875|1888|30|825|1798|822|30|1328|827|2348|5|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|5|0|0|0|2|15|5|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

These both builds are made to maximize dps, but not forgetting the pet and you are basically a glasscannon.

This is the same as both of the upper ones, but has more survival. If you still feel like needing more survival, then drop 5 from BM and move it to WS to get protection on dodge.
http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/ranger#19|0|1242|374|4253|3875|1888|20|825|1798|0|30|1328|827|2348|10|1343|0|0|0|0|0|0|10|2343|0|0|2|15|5|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

Signet of the Hunt is basically just filler, use it when moving and you can take anything you like on its place when you go to combat.

This is a ranger only problem because 90% of the traits and skills make no sense or are completely useless. I’m sorry you leveled one to 80.
Either way, search for trap or regen Ranger. These are the only 2 viable Ranger builds.

Arekai.5698:

This is a ranger only problem because 90% of the traits and skills make no sense or are completely useless. I’m sorry you leveled one to 80.
Either way, search for trap or regen Ranger. These are the only 2 viable Ranger builds.

Well, I admit I am very limited on my experience. But right now I’m running with a build that focuses little on traps but has some points into Beast Mastery with the +healing. So far I seem to be easily be the top DPS in instances, I have to reeeeally try to not pull aggro.

On a related note, why is it the ranger ALWAYS has major problems in every MMORPG? I played a hunter heavily in WoW Burning Crusade when they were extremely broken. I played a Bounty Hunter on SW:TOR and they were laughable compared to melee and sorcerers. Seems like no game can ever get the ranger right.

I heavily played a hunter in wow (from vanilla to burning crusade), and first, they weren’t broken (at least not in burning crusade where we were the best dps class pve-wise).

Second, and more important, you can’t compare wow and gw2, and from an ex-hunter, the gw2 ranger is totally different.
First of all, you can’t trait your pet lightly, he is part of your dps, even if you trait your stat with no dps, he still have one (the BM-tanker his a great exemple of good synergy with your pet). Second, there is less theorycrafting in gw2 than in wow (I remember the huge spreedsheets with the good rotation of your skill when you have a rapid firing rifle or a slow bow), and we don’t have access to the numbers of the game. It’s more a feeling of your class and your weapons and your pet (switching between weapons AND pet is crucial in this game).
And in this way ranger is probably the hardest class to master in gw2 …

But I really think you are making a mistake by thinking you could play a ranger like a hunter, you should probably trying a rifle warrior …

Uhhh, well first, I meant hunters were broken in PvP. PvE is whatever in any game, just fighting a computer. In PvP hunters were massively the least represented class in high end arenas during BC.

And I’m not sure why you got so negative lol. I played a hunter great and I can play my ranger great. I gave you nothing to think otherwise, I simply mentioned that I played a hunter in WoW as well and you assumed I couldn’t handle a ranger on GW2 =p

Was weird.

SerRolandStark.2758:

Arekai.5698:

This is a ranger only problem because 90% of the traits and skills make no sense or are completely useless. I’m sorry you leveled one to 80.
Either way, search for trap or regen Ranger. These are the only 2 viable Ranger builds.

Well, I admit I am very limited on my experience. But right now I’m running with a build that focuses little on traps but has some points into Beast Mastery with the +healing. So far I seem to be easily be the top DPS in instances, I have to reeeeally try to not pull aggro.

On a related note, why is it the ranger ALWAYS has major problems in every MMORPG? I played a hunter heavily in WoW Burning Crusade when they were extremely broken. I played a Bounty Hunter on SW:TOR and they were laughable compared to melee and sorcerers. Seems like no game can ever get the ranger right.

I’ll get to your OP, but to give an answer to this; ranger in guild wars 1 was very efficient. Guild Wars 1 was a very different game, but rangers essentially served the role of interrupter/condition pressure in PvP. With access to long lasting cripples and lots of block stances and good condition removal, rangers could split from a group and pressure an objective runner or start to solo a base, while keeping good pressure on a team and disabling key skills on the enemy team (think disabling healers or condition spells, or the mesmer, who shared the interrupter role but didn’t provide as much damage pressure, while being able to provide a stronger shutdown on casters).

With the transition to guild wars 2, lots of specific class roles either disappeared entirely or got meshed together and shared amongst a majority of the classes. With no dedicated healer and much more skill spam gameplay, on top of a UI change (you used to be able to see what skill a player was using under their name), interrupts the way they were in gw1 lost their place entirely, and because there is a damage focus in the game, rangers and mesmers had to evolve from utility classed into something new.

With mesmers, they went with clones and avoid-ability with high damage. With rangers, in beta, they were nature based with high damage. They decided to all but destroy the spirit build transitioning into release, and nerf longbow and greatsword damage to the ground (comparatively to the way it is now).

To try and help with your OP, I did this a little while back with the shortbow: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/80146-heres-some-math-for-you-dps-comparisons/

In general, and I will admit that while I support my opinion with as much fact as I can produce, it is still opinion, that power/crit builds sacrifice more survival to do more burst damage, while condition builds have a strong enough sustain damage without sacrificing nearly as much survival for me to say that as this point, my preference is condition based builds. Note the I almost exclusively PvP though, so that plays a part in my decision as well.
As far as utilities, the most unique and most useful (again, opinion) are traps. Lightning Reflexes has its place in PvP, as does Signet of the Wild does on a healing based build. But overall, until I can see a more even tradeoff in PvP from survival to direct damage, I stick with a condition/toughness/precision trap build (rabid amulet/knights jewel 0/30/30/5/5 with sigil of earth shortbow and sword/torch sigil of energy/sigil of corruption and 5x runes of the lich +1x +25 vitality rune) that capitalizes on increasing vitality alongside the already decent armor rating so that dealing with the ever so popular burst damage in PvP is easier while still outputting great damage.

As far as PvE and gearing, I wouldn’t know, but I would be willing to gamble that with the stats you can achieve in PvE, there is a point where you can build power/crit build very effectively, without such a high survival tradeoff while still maintaining good damage. Unfortunately, a lot of traits and utility choices aren’t as supportive of power builds as you see on some other classes (20% damage on targets with less than 50% health, for example) so it gets left more up to player preference than it does being a better option. Certain traits obviously benefit certain weapons better than others, so that is also up to what weapon you choose and then the application of common sense.