Guild Wars 2

Hey folks, I’m curious as to what builds other glass cannon rangers out there are rolling with. This is for the hectic environment that is WvWvW specifically.

After considering closely a lack of evasion/elusiveness to justify a high damage build with a longbow/shortbow combo lately I’ve been planning on dropping the longbow completely outside times where they AoE is needed and opting for a shortbow/sword-dagger set-up to enable much more evasive/escape techniques to accommodate for the need of glass cannon builds to be “harder to grasp” for our foes. (The sword-dagger would give access to 3 extra evades when timed properly, bringing the total of weapon evades available to 4 with the shortbow thrown in.)

Traditionally I had rolled with 30 Marks, 30 Skirmishing/ 10 survival trait builds in the past, but now I’m gunning more for a 30 skirmishing/20 Wilderness Survival/20 beast mastery trait build, I’ll include a trait calculator link in a bit for the more fine details.

Gear: Naturally as I already highlighted in the thread name, the gear I use and plan to continue using is full berserker exotic. Right now for runes I have full superior runes of the ranger. As for sigils, I have a life leech on the shortbow. Unfortunately at this time I don’t have an exotic sword or dagger, gotta get to work on that. Not sure what sigils I will put on them yet, but I’m thinking about the might on crit sigil, as well life stealing, fire and air sigils.

Pets: The 30% increased pet speed and 30% more pet damage on critical traits will be active. Obviously what pets are used is a very situational thing since I always have moas out when I’m on static defense on a wall, etc. But in general on foot in the field, I roll with Lynx/Jaguar, Dual canines of various types for knockdown lock, namely Hyena and wolf or hyena/Drakehound. Occasionally I use combinations of feline and canine. I also often carry around a siamoth, at least briefly for the plasma buffs and the 2/3 chance of getting a stealth pick up. Also have considered rolling more with spiders for the immobilize spam.

Skills: I’ve almost always rolled with Signet of the Hunt (Increased Speed passive), Signet of Renewal for condition removal and stun break, and Quickening Zephyr. (Brought down to a 48 second cooldown from traits.) I’ve thought of fitting in lightning reflexes, I’m well aware of how good it is but have traditionally had trouble doing so due to not investing in the traits to send conditions to my pet.

Does anybody else there have experience with similar builds, particular those including sword-dagger/shortbow and more specifically some videos to accompany it of competent, skillful ranger gameplay with the builds especially where timing in the sword-dagger-roll evades are concerned. (Would be extra nice with footage of battles with every other class contained, especially with some against very skilled mesmers/thieves rolling max stealth/evasion builds and how to counter them effectively where possible.)

Signet of the hunt + 30% pet speed buff is largely redundant as far as I can tell.

neverborne.4736:

Signet of the hunt + 30% pet speed buff is largely redundant as far as I can tell.

Ah, they don’t stack? I’ll remove it in that case.

Here’s a link of roughly what I’m planning, might change some here and there. Of course I’m open to critique and suggestions.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQBYgopgTWi9wQHiRPFxS9A

I recently just finished my ranger, he’s currently:

• Full exotic berserker armor
• Full exotic berserker trinkets
• 6/6 Runes of the Scholar
• 30 marks, 30 skirm, 10 survival
• Exotic berserker longbow w/ superior sigil of accuracy
• Exotic berserker shortbow w/ superior sigil of strength

So far I’m really digging this setup. Yes a stiff wind will kill you, but your long range domination is ridiculous. Just last night my auto attack on the longbow crit for 4500 (and that was without the 10% crit damage food). I think it was vs an upleveled player, but even still I was pretty impressed. Rapid fire routinely hits for 9k-12k. I played with the shortbow a bit as well, and combined with the sigil of strength I hit 25 stacks of might extremely fast. I’m still feeling the class out but it’s been a lot of fun thus far.

I’m using the signet of renewal + of the hunt, quickening zephyr, and rampage as one

Lopsang.2763:

I recently just finished my ranger, he’s currently:

• Full exotic berserker armor
• Full exotic berserker trinkets
• 6/6 Runes of the Scholar
• 30 marks, 30 skirm, 10 survival
• Exotic berserker longbow w/ superior sigil of accuracy
• Exotic berserker shortbow w/ superior sigil of strength

So far I’m really digging this setup. Yes a stiff wind will kill you, but your long range domination is ridiculous. Just last night my auto attack on the longbow crit for 4500 (and that was without the 10% crit damage food). I think it was vs an upleveled player, but even still I was pretty impressed. Rapid fire routinely hits for 9k-12k. I played with the shortbow a bit as well, and combined with the sigil of strength I hit 25 stacks of might extremely fast. I’m still feeling the class out but it’s been a lot of fun thus far.

I’m using the signet of renewal + of the hunt, quickening zephyr, and rampage as one

All my builds in the past were very similar to yours same with the full bersker exotics, although with superior runes of the ranger. I can say it worked amazingly well for me as just rolling as a part of the group in WvW. Quite a while ago my guild leader made me go commander and I found myself getting focused on a lot more than previously and found it more beneficial to die less often due to the leading, hence the desire to put a little more survivability and escape capability in my build to deal with the extra attention. That said, I think as you alluded to builds with longbow and shortbow are great, especially when you’re in rank with a good force. From my pre-commander experiences I think you will find it all together enjoyable and effective.

I’ve gotta say on an off-topic tangent though, its a shame the changes they applied to the “guard” skill. While I agree that pets shouldn’t be climbing walls, organized ranger groups were an amazing defense utility when 5+ rangers would use “Guard” to send their jaguars from a wall to the ground below and sending a stealth pet bomb on catas in those situations where a big zerg will just build up catas on a tower or keep and plop a 30-50 person meatwall to protect them. IMO, rangers were one of the few classes that could break those sieges from an outmanned team with little risk to themselves, and pets not being stuck at an altitude made a lot of sense as what would there be to stop them from jumping off a wall and attacking a foe when commanded? A real shame that we won’t be able to pull that off now. :/

My GC build has full exotic beserker armor and trinkets, as well as the rune of scholars. I have sigil of bloodlust on a beserker shortbow, quickly stacks up to 25 power. Sigil of fire is on my beserker longbow, which is my main weapon.

My skills are 30/30/0/10/0, the 10 in nature magic is for a little extra vitality, but more importantly spirit of strength, which gives 5% of vitality as a power bonus.

My skills are healing spring, sigil of signet of stone, signet of the wild, qz, and rampage as one. The pets I use are jaguar and reef drake.

The play style I have been using (in wvw) is mostly get 25 stacks of power, pop rao, signet of wild (which gives a great buff in damage), and pop qz, then unload with knockback, rapid fire, and switch to shortbow to finish the person off. If I get in trouble I can use signet of stone for 6 seconds of no damage, and use the healing spring. With this build I am mostly trying to go for huge buffs then the most damage in the shortest amount of time possible

I think you’ll be ok if you stick to large groups and just pew pew all day to farm badges, but if anyone breaks through and you have to fight man to man you’re going to get worked.

Not nearly enough burst to have such low defenses.

You may very well own with this build, but I personally see no point in going power for WvW.

I’ll just say this: I look for rangers with the opening shot symbol. I have never lost to one, and I don’t fear that I ever will. Just last night I beat the same power ranger at least 3 times straight, not once needing to use my healing skill. I honestly could just sit there and melee without bothering to dodge.

I think this build could be useful for helping to defend a keep, but exceptionally weak for small fights/1v1s.

I’ve been running a mostly glass cannon LB/GS-jaguar build in wvw for a while, and i really like it (for zergs and small groups. has troubles against thieves) Instead of dropping longbow to go SB/sword dagger may i suggest going LB/GS?

since you go jaguar i don’t need to explain how they crit every time in stealth. Now, when roaming solo the skills and playstyle takes on a beastmaster role with high burst by stacking large % dmg boosts with vuln, hilt bash(with +95% stun duration between 15% sigil, 30% from 30 in marksmanship, and the grandmaster +50%. it’s a very lengthy stun that makes your pet hit hard and i follow it with a maul. usually hit’s around 2.7 k on crit., then it bleeds), and on every interrupt another 50% dmg boosts, and signet hunt active as your jag is running in. but the GS is really about defense. since they changed the 4 skill you can now block any and all attacks for the whole duration as long as you aren’t standing still(that will trigger the counter attack-which interrupts and does nice dmg). swoops a great gap closer and #1 gives you the evades you want.

In zergs, just barrage and rapid fire away safely from 1500 range and does great dmg as im sure you know. my favorite part about 1500 range is killing seige from where only you can reach. earlier i killed 4 catapaults and an arrow cart in one keep defense lol.

I change up utilities a lot.
Defensive while-in-zerg(actually pretty balanced, just good survivability with two invincibilities)
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-Fo-g;1sEVt-e2REV-0;9k3V;1TT;0909A09B;44;0b-F2;2LNW4LNW4h

if your zerg outmans them, and you’re sylvari bring grasping vines instead of protect me to root people fleeing and clean them up.

roaming(quite bad against more than one human player. does just fine against camps, and i really, really like it for open world pve)

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-Fo-g;2Fku-e2ZDV-0;9F6a;1TT;0909A09B;44;0b-F2;2LNW4LNW4k

I’m working on a condition trapper SB/Axe-torch build since my build so bad when it’s more than one human player versus just you.

dont ever go full berserker as ranger. i strongly urge you against it. dont waste your gold. going full zerker makes sense on warriors, mesmers and thieves because you can drop targets easily or use endure pain/GS to get away.

going full zerker on the ranger just makes no sense. we have no utilities to help us get away or drop targets in some fashion. not only will you get two-shot by some mouthbreathing thief, but you may even get one-shot if hes got enough might and quickness up. even in large groups a thief can annihilate you, stomp you and disappear. scrub rangers are #1 targets for glass cannon thieves.

tldr full zerker – big mistake until utilities are fixed. i recommend knight’s gear with combination of PVT or cleric’s if u wanna burst people down.

This is my first few days of playing with a fairly glassy ranger (it’s even glassier now), worked out alright:

I’m a newb to the class still but surprisingly won many 1vs1 against thieves and eles and mesmers. On a good day of playing I don’t get killed once, but I guess I play a little cowardly with it. Mostly meant for defensive situations in WvW where I can shoot down the upleveled people filling out the ranks.

Max damage with rapid fire was 16,000 on a mesmer, would love to get it up to 20k.

So I bought a cheap non-berserker sword and dagger just to test this out more physically(planning to berserker exotic sword and dagger by the end of tonight.), and tweaked some things with the build to raise a little extra survivability. (Namely I added the trait where you stealth when stunned/knocked down/etc.)

I started rolling with siamoth and jaguar. If I saw a person/group coming, I’d use the siamoths f2 and hopefully get a feather (Plasma is still extremely good also) and swap to the jaguar before combat. With the feathers, I’d have both my jaguar and myself stealth and typically insta-kill an unlucky target much in a manner like thieves do.

I did this a few times to a group of 5+, and here was where I really got to put the evasion spam to the test, and I must say for those 5 vs 1 situations when you do find yourself in them, the sword dagger is a godsend. Often times when played right, even with full 80s you have a good chance to take one or two down with you, or to take one out and escape easily but even if you don’t you can buy insane amounts of time as you have 4 nearly spammable weapon evasive attacks between the s/d and the shortbow, throw in your basic rolls with the protection on roll trait and I found that often times it would take 5-7+ people upwards of 3-4 minutes to kill me, and that’s with no toughness or vitality in my build at all, pure berserker armor and trinkets.

To be honest, I’m a long way from mastering it and I require more practice with this set up and testing in general with different pets as well but this has lead me to believe that the ranger has untapped potential in this weapon set up. The hard thing about the s/d is that it seems you have to disable auto attack otherwise its auto attack sequences that seem to not allow movement during attack motion will deny a lot of your rolls. With it disabled you should get full control though.

The other thing to keep in mind is changing the “target next” key and at least assigning and using a “target nearest” key, and disabling the option for skills to automatically pick up targets. (Ie. when you press the 1 key and a target is selected and attack is launched simultaneously.)

The reason for this setting is that, when you use hornet sting to leap backwards, you can hit the esc key and very quickly reverse your ranger’s direction and then use the forward leap in the direction OPPOSITE your enemies to create an even larger distance, and then proceed to swap the the short bow and take advantage of your ranged attacks/heal quickly while you are out of their range, etc.

This sounds complicated, and it still feels weird trying to pull it off, but it is indeed very executable in the middle of a fight with a good fps rate(something I tend to lack having maybe 15-20 on min graphics) and practice.

The end result is that you can use hornet sting and its combo leap to send you in a single direction with what I think are even greater distances that that created by lightning reflexes. Or of course you can use the second leap to head straight into the enemies if that’s your thing. Between the number 2, number 3, and number 4 you can time your evades right and avoid a whole lot of major attacks if you know your enemy classes well, and timing it right you can find yourself creating enough distance to break combat even (ESPECIALLY if you include lightning reflexes and do the sword number 2- target remove-face opposite direction leap) or to at least buy enough time to have a timely pet swap, do it right with the siamoth and you can possibly get another plasma/feather to aid in escape/return to fight your opponents.

Of course the other thing to keep in mind is to pick your targets, and be aware of your surroundings. If you notice your foes are too distracted and for some reason not healing their allies, pick a weak target and beat them to within an inch of a loot bag and leave them in low downed state so that while you fight the other targets, you can rally off them if need be. Likewise when out in WvW, you can purposefully pull the PvE mobs into your fight depending on where it takes place and use them to rally I think also.

On another note, Every so often you encounter a mesmer or thief out there who has stat builds and skills builds based entirely on not acquiring kills, but wasting time and distracting zergs, those people with tanky gear set ups spamming as much stealth and evasion/temporary invulnerable attacks who can make entire groups of 10-15+ takes 5 minutes chasing them all over the place. I’m going to theorize that using this weapon set up on the ranger with all the maximum possible evasion/stunbreak utilities (Ie. Signet of the hunt for speed, and signet of renewal + lightning reflexes) with a tanky built ranger you MAY be able to accomplish very similar things. Especially if you include that one trait to grant vigor on enemy crits for the extra protection-providing rolls.