(edited by Rimu.7105)
General Armor? What Stats.
I think if you are considering a MF set at all, you are better off having a full MF set just for farming. In which case even masterwork items work just as well, since cursed shores farming etc you don’t really need to deal as much dmg as long as you are in a party. As for more general armor for PvE and WvW, you can consider Rampager for the high crit and innate power and precision. Personally I’m using Berserker after using Rampager for a long time as I wanted higher damage for the same survivability.
Eisteria. Asuran Ranger.
Gear Swap isn’t a good call. How it comes you change your armor in the middle of a fight?
What we all could use is swapping traits and ultility skills with the weapon.
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“A man chooses; a slave obeys.” | “Want HardMode? Play Ranger!”
“A man chooses; a slave obeys.” | “Want HardMode? Play Ranger!”
@Royal, the way I see it, its not used for mid-battle swapping, more of an outside of battle change up, so like I said I could have a set for WvW without hogging up 6-10 spaces of inventory, just have it set in the secendary armor slots.
@Atroras: Full MF set, alright, I tend to work solo, but I dont really have issues dieing unless im running though an army of mobs (even then I usually come out alive without lag), Rampager, alright, that gives me something to think about.
As far as MF goes, only use MF gear if you are soloing things.
If you run MF gear in dungeons or fractals, you are hindering your party, and aren’t contributing much to the run other than leaching drops.
@Atroras: Full MF set, alright, I tend to work solo, but I dont really have issues dieing unless im running though an army of mobs (even then I usually come out alive without lag), Rampager, alright, that gives me something to think about.
Yea, I forgot to mention that Rampager has condition damage as well, which works well if you intend to use traps. =) another choice to see if you’ll like your stats is to try out different builds in PvP. The trinkets and runes there are free to experiment n (albeit different from PvE) but its a good gauge for the play style.
And yes! Always keep a separate MF set just for farming. It’s much more efficient for farming. Then run dungeons/fractals/WvW in your main set.
Eisteria. Asuran Ranger.
I have 2set in my pocket rampage1set(Adventure WWW) / shaman1set(Noble MF)
And 2set of accs(Kinght/carrion/wayferer) can mix 4 of them to going out
Full MF set must have buddy/party to help.
My full MF armor18% + rune60% + accs15% + jewel20% + food30% for my max MF.
But it more trouble if you have to stand solo without friend.
(That why I fix armor to shaman…)
I can use both rampage/shaman to go PvE/WWW.
If need farm just pick shaman+accsMF.
Rampager stats work well for shortbow rangers. Because you are ranged (and in open world PvE, have a pet to tank for you) you won’t need to be as durable and take as many hits, plus most rangers will have points in Wilderness survival giving them usually at least 100 toughness. This means you can skip using a defensive stat on your armour (toughness, vitality) and instead go with three DPS stats (assuming you are able to survive well enough without defensive armour stats). Rampager’s prioritises precision which will be great for lots of crits but it also carries power so you don’t hit like a wet noodle and condition damage to make use out of your traps.
Personally I don’t believe mf gear is worth it. The efficiency loss of a third defensive or offensive stat is not justified by the pittance of mf you usually get (3% is terrible). It’s much better value, imo, to run mf runes and food buffs. If you must bring mf gear, some of the ascended trinkets can reach fairly high mf. If you want mf gear, I’d personally run a masterwork mf set.
One thing I like to do is complement my armour set with trinkets. If I’m happy with the critical chance from my traits and Rampager’s armour I would look at maybe running Carrion trinkets. This will boost power (always good), vitality (to make you less squishy, this will be important in WvW) and condition damage (this will really help to boost trap DPS and help your shortbow bleeds hit harder. You could also go with Knight’s to become tankier (power, toughness, precision) or Soldier’s to become much tankier (power toughness vitality) or Berserker’s (power, precision, crit damage) if you want to move to a direct damage DPS route.
Finally I’d look into which runes you want to run. Assuming you don’t want to run mf runes, I suggest Runes of the Adventurer (a cheaper option, the endurance on heal is actually really good in WvW it also helps keep your endurance full for the 10% damage bonus from the Marksmanship trait), Runes of the Thief (more expensive, but they boost precision for more crits, condition damage for harder hitting conditions and give a +10% damage when flanking bonus – something you will want to do anyway with ranger traits and shortbow bleeds). The cheapest option would be to run either crests (Rabid offers precision, toughness, condition damage) which are pretty cheap (usually around 2 silver) or the rare jewels (not the exotic ones) which are only slightly weaker than the exotic versions but at a fraction of the cost. This gives you a wider variety of stats (between crests and rare jewels you have access to most stat combinations in the game) to experiment with for little financial investment, but you lose out on interesting effects of runes.
Personally I think Rampagers is a good base ranger armour to have. As long as you use the shortbow you will make use of the stats even if you decide to stop using traps, even the sword often uses torch off hand so condition damage won’t be wasted. Ranger’s don’t really do well without power in the build, so that’s always going to be important and rangers have multiple ways to make use of critical hits (every point in Skirmishing will increase your crit damage by 1%, you can trait to bleed on crit, give pets might on crit or use sigils and food for crit effects) so precision won’t be a waste, even in a trap build (although Carrion might be better for a trapper build, it would be a waste of an armour set if you wanted to stop running traps). If you want to experiment with other build types, the armour set’s base stats work well with most ranger combinations and tinkets can fill enough of the difference to make a variety of builds viable.
Personally if I was going to buy one ranger set of armour (not trinkets, just armour) I would probably get either Knight’s or Soldier’s. I like survivability and between runes and tinkets, I can supplement the base stats offered by my armour and build however I want. If I didn’t want to buy a defensive set (as a personal preference) I would probably get Rampagers. That stat combination works well for most ranger builds and can easily be supplemented by trinkets to branch out into more niche strategies.