Guild Wars 2

I got my Ranger up to 80 and now I want to try to get a good build setup for him. I know I’m mostly going to be focused on PvE, dungeons and possibly fractals. I want to be mostly spec’d for damage, but I also want be sure I’m not going down to a single hit most of the time. What would you guys consider “minimum requirements” for that? Also any recommendations on armor/trinket stats and traits or links to good builds would be welcome.

If you want damage, full beserkers is the way to go. Once you learn the dungeon you are attempting, you shouldn’t have problems with going down all the time.

While learning, you can’t go wrong with Soldiers (Pow, Vit, Tough) or Knights (Tough, Prec, Power). Either of those will make things more forgiving.

I personally love to run Apothecaries (Healing, Tough, Cond Dmg) because it gives both you and your pet the highest possible survivability. You will not be seeing the big damage numbers that you would with beserkers, but you put out very respectable condition damage and your pet still does great damage.

Well, I’d like something that will allow me to learn new dungeons but still maintain a good damage output. I’m just not sure how to mix and match damage and defense to get the best results.

That and I know I will make mistakes or get a lag spike here and there and I’d rather that not be a death sentence.

go for knights helm-chest-pants-rings, zerker everything else (or put some clerics in the mix) for a mix dmg with survival. Go for LB/GS so you can stay both at range or melee untill you learn the fights and know where and when each is better.

Learn to control your pet well. Change it before it dies, call it back, send it in.
Try to learn how to control your sword attacks sometime, as it can be a great weapon to use.

As your learn the fights and weapons more, start changing the gear to more dmg (zerker) and less defense (knights/clerics)

Some people like going for cond dmg.
I personally find it bad in dungeons PUGs. As condition stacks cap by mobs, unless you have a organized group, each with a set of conditions to apply and dont overstack, you will be wasting dmg.

I run three pieces of knight’s armor and everything else berserker’s. Once you’ve got full exotics, you’ll pretty much never die as long as you’ve got some awareness.