Master of all Professions
sPvP Rank Dragon – 8 Champ Titles – Ruby Division
Hey guys, I recently got my ranger to 80 and was wondering my options for survivability. I normally play a guardian so it’s a little hard to get used to managing survivability on other characters (no aegis?! jk jk) But basically what I like to do is equip in full zerk gear and then work my way backwards.
Main question is this, should most of my survivability be made up with traits or gear or does it require a mix? You don’t have to put much details I’m just looking at a x/x/x/x/x and maybe some gear type suggestions or utility slot suggestions.
The gameplay I prefer most: front lines as much as possible but when the going gets tough, be able to survive long enough to get out of there and range.
Putting lots of points in BM and wilderness survival trees greatly increases your durability. Bark skin and the protection on dodge traits are really nice, and signet of the wild+natural regen trait and some healing gear makes you and pet passively regen quite a staggering amount actually. Then it really depends on what weapons you like, if you want to go condition or power or full on pet build etc.
The problem is you want to be a front-liner and run full zerk gear. you pretty much have to build up on toughness and healing power if you’re going to be doing that. which means you’re going to have to drop some of your attack power for defense.
a ranger doesn’t have the same armor value as a guardian, and the only protection he can get is pretty much on evasion/dodge roll. you’re defense should be constant movement and use of your short bow’s or swords evasive skill. i find a good defense is a tripple knockdown + quickness achieved by going duel dog (any dog + hyena). it’s actually possible to chain a stun and then interrupt their attacks, while pelt them with arrows.
what kind of weapons do you like to use? what kind of pet’s do you like to use? what kind of damaged do you want to be specced for?
Edit: your main defensive skills are: protect me, and lightning reflexes. rampage of one provides a good/reliable use of stability as well. if you run greatsword your #3 is great for gap closing/making and your #4 is pretty good for blocking ranged attacks/1 big spike.
(edited by Luriyu.6873)
To help me survive I use Dwayna gear, full set (mainly Berzerker jewelry). My healing is decent, my health is high, but I do suffer some offense for it. However, a dead rangers has zero offense. So 24k health, and 930+ ticks of hp per TU. I also use the ability that upon a stun or such I go invisible and the ability that puts all damge on my pet for 6 seconds. Can’t even begin to tell you how much that has helped me survive.
(edited by NargofWoV.4267)
Toughness, and then healing but healing is dependant on what heals you’re using, for example I use TU which is powerful but really doesn’t gain much from healing power so I don’t really stack that much of it and stay very survivable with decent condition and pet damage.
Healing is useful though, our other two heals and our proct’d regen gain greatly from it.
Thanks for the input guys. But for more info about weapon choice. I use shortbow and sword/axe. I really don’t want to move away from it just for gameplay preference, I like the feel of them so I’m willing to trait/gear up to make them work as besst as possible (even if it’s not the best compared to other weapon setups)
Evades and mobility are Ranger strengths, traits that help keep your endurance up, that grant protection and swiftness, good use of weapon swapping…they go a long way towards keeping you alive when things get messy. There are a lot of things you can do, but some of them require you to invest heavily in a trait line you might now have reason to otherwise….using mobility and the related effects is a good balanced method of obtaining survivability.
+1 for rangers being fast to respond and very informative!
It’s already been said, but just to drive it home: Wilderness Survival is not surprisingly the “survival” tree (it’s even in the name!). Bark skin and protection on dodge roll are really just too nice to pass up.
The build I’m using uses clerics, so I also use 30 Beastmastery and Signet of the Wild/Signet of stone. With high healing power, signet of the wild becomes just like the regen guardians get.
Thanks for the input guys. But for more info about weapon choice. I use shortbow and sword/axe. I really don’t want to move away from it just for gameplay preference, I like the feel of them so I’m willing to trait/gear up to make them work as besst as possible (even if it’s not the best compared to other weapon setups)
Sword is great for survivability, in extreme situations, I find if I’m in trouble I’ll jump to my melee weapons and I’ll use evades without worrying about if I’m hitting anything just to keep my TU working without me taking damage, throw in the dagger and you get one more as well as your two normal evades and high endurance regen/vigor.
A good starting point is the 0 0 30 10 30 build, equip full apothecary ( shaman in the mist ) or cleric gear ( i think toughness + healing > toughness + vitality plus they offer some condition or direct dmg ). From this point start tweaking it to balance damage vs surviveability.
A good starting point is the 0 0 30 10 30 build, equip full apothecary ( shaman in the mist ) or cleric gear ( i think toughness + healing > toughness + vitality plus they offer some condition or direct dmg ). From this point start tweaking it to balance damage vs surviveability.
I think this is pretty much it in a nutshell, I started with cleric and then moved to shaman and find it much much better even without traps, I think moved my survivability down a little and raised my crit chance to help with procts and extra damage.
The amount of bleed damage I can do is insane.
Gotta agree with Capuchinseven, SB & Sword are good weapon choices, but for any WvW & survivability you’re going to want to dump the axe offhand in favor of a dagger. Nobody will stand still long enough for your spinning axes to do much damage. And with dagger, you’ll gain 2 conditions, a cripple, and another evade. And as has been mentioned, Ranger survivability is all about evasion.
Your pet can be a wonderful ally, even for bunker-type Rangers. Throw a few traits into BM and you can spike with your pet (which is often ignored) while evading and crippling with your sword/dagger. Dog pets knockdown, which is great for control, and jaguars can crit spike quite well, taking an enemy by surprise. Popping “Protect Me!” will make you invulnerable and then a well timed pet swap will give you quickness (if traited) and keep your pet from dying too.
I actually find a good time for an enemy to get hit by our pets is when they close to melee, they can still keep moving but our evasive attacks with sword make it harder for them to keep on us while moving around a lot which allows your pet to hit more.
The weak point to that is that you’re relying on your pet for damage, and also for it to be alive. Which is why I much prefer condition damage even in a bunker build because as rangers we seem capable of decent damage output while still being tanky.
The pet seems to be two sides of a coin, they are very important and powerful but also a pain to micro manage and come with some bugs and issues.
I have a hard time getting rid of my axe off hand. I do not use it for stacking invulnerability, unless they want to stand there, but to either save myself at low health, or to kill someone ranging me with low health.
I was fighting a ranger and thief the other day. I play the beastmaster build, 0/0/30/10/30 with apothecary armor, and runes of the grove by the way. I put my jag on the ranger, and concentrated on the thief myself. After a couple minutes of taking them down slowly, I had them both down to about 5 to 10% health. Bad thing was my health was getting low as well with about 5 seconds cooldown left on troll ungent. I did everything I could just to survive those 5 seconds, popped troll ungent, switched to sword/ axe as the thief was now using short bow as was the ranger, and hit whirling defense. Basically I was in full heal mode and untouchable while they used ranged weapons on me. The ranger died to his own arrows, and thief went invis to heal and try and res the ranger. Quick stomped ranger and then finished thief off.
Now I will admit there are better weapons like dagger or torch for damage, but I use axe for survival.
The best thing is we’re not limited to the weapons we use. In wvw 1v1 you usually have enough time to switch before you engage
I like the off hand axe, it’s just the #4 skill that ruins it for me and means I end up with my dagger instead.
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