Crafting Ascended Gear
I would highly suggest not crafting ascended armor for anyone unless you do Fractals. But I would always suggest crafting ascended weapons and zerk is a safe bet for anything.
Wait for the feature patch before you craft anything, pick a build that works for you and just craft away. I think ascended gear set does make a huge difference in wubwub, especially the weapons boosts your attack quite a lot.
Froudactyl // Herp Derp Druid // Judge Legends [JDGE] // Seafarer’s Rest
Ascended Armor gives a defense rating equal to 54 more toughness compared to exotic armor, which gives a defense rating equal to 122 more toughness compared to rare armor.
If your going full Zerker, Ascended armor will give you approximately 14 more power and 11 more precision and ferocity compared to exotic armor, which gives 37 more power and 27 more precision and ferocity compared to rare armor. Ascended armor doesn’t give a noticeable stat increase.
You can take advantage of the Infusion slots to boost your defensive stats (equal to 30 toughness or 300 more health), which is something, and all together, a full set of Ascended gear will boost your survival and damage about ~10% (which on a longbow can be 300-400 extra damage on long range shot, and even more dps on a sword or greatsword), little more if you use the infusion slots and add more stats.
Its at this point that you’re just trying to min/max your stats to be as efficient as possible, not deal any significantly greater amount of damage. If you don’t use food already, you can spend way less, use food and get a bigger boost than ascended gear gives.
Even ignoring the above comments on Ascended, why dont you just go play in exotic till you know for yourself what it is you want?
Making Ascended gear before actually knowing for yourself it’s a setup that works for you if just asking for trouble.
Cufufalating – Ranger / Part-Time Mesmer
Gunnar’s Hold
Gunnar’s Hold
As a side note, I’d also look at the Thief and Engineer some and see if these classes you like and how you like playing them. With ascended items now being tradable, if you can use the gear on multiple classes all the better.
That’s the dilemma I’m dealing with now. Trying to build a suit that works well on a power Ranger and a burst Thief in WvW.
You’d expect it to be easy, but I don’t generally play glass Ranger as opposed to my thief who can run full zerker without issue.
Even ignoring the above comments on Ascended, why dont you just go play in exotic till you know for yourself what it is you want?
Making Ascended gear before actually knowing for yourself it’s a setup that works for you if just asking for trouble.
Just to clarify, I played my Ranger a lot up until a year ago. Enough that I only WvW’d with him and he’s got every skill and 300+ skill points in reserve.
I played the glass cannon/zerker Ranger, it worked for me. I just wanted to make sure that nothing changed in the year I was gone where it’s to the point of “no one” runs around as full zerker Ranger because XYZ.
(I agree with the comment above though, I might wait until after the patch and see where everything is when the dust settles.)
What gear/runes do most Rangers run around with in WvW?
LB ranger will get some hefty buffs next Tuesday. Have you looked over the upcoming changes? If it worked for you a year ago, it will be much better soon.
I don’t think there is much of a standard gear set for WvW rangers. People are all over the place customizing to their build and playstyle. Ranger’s aren’t in the WvW meta so it’s basically up to you.
One thing you could do is craft berserker and if you feel you need it, mix in some exotic PVT or something (assuming you would want the berserker for PvE.)