Guild Wars 2

Hey all, I got this game about a month and a half ago and have been enjoying it quite a bit since then. I chose Ranger as my class, since I wanted to have a hard hitting ranged class, which I assumed that profession was. Well, I’m now level 61 and even with super glass cannon builds, I’m still not hitting like I want to. Am I doing something wrong, or is the class more for pestering enemies than doing damage?

Unfortunately the ranger isn’t a hard-hitting class. I’m not sure what our ‘strengths’ are but hitting hard is certainly not one of them.

I’m going to save you a LOT of time – take the time to roll a thief or a warrior. Your patience will pay off when you see the numbers. I rolled a warrior and spec’d in the rifle and wow – just wow. I’m levelling a mesmer right now and I’ve actually had more fun in the 11 hours of playing a mesmer compared to the 270 hours playing as a ranger.

If you’re having fun with the ranger, stick with it. All I’m saying is that if you want to have more fun, try something else.

Bummer, that’s sad to hear. I was hoping for a class with the hard-hitting equivalent of a mid-game Drow, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Thanks for the heads up, but I think I’ll make the best of the class now, since I’m pretty far along with it.

Even at level 61 your damage isn’t high because you don’t have the best gear available. With a full glass cannon build stacking crit damage and power etc., at level 80 our damage isn’t the best but its far better than what you think the limit is at level 60.

However most of ranger damage from ranged weapons isn’t merely auto attacks, as most of the short bow damage comes from conditions. while longbow might have better damage, you have to stand at absolute max range or you get penalized, and you also have a terribly long casting auto attack.

Until all our supposed updates are put in over the next 2 months (assuming 1 balance patch a month) I’d say it would probably be better to not focus on crit damage builds with a shortbow because Quickening Zephyr doesn’t help the auto attack speed much (reduces it by about 1/4 rather than 1/2), but don’t let me stop you from doing it if large single target numbers are what you are after.

Just going to throw out what im currently running to give you and idea as to another approach you might be able to take:

Gear is based around Rampagers armor and Coral accessories (power/precision/condition damage),

I talent in to:
20 power (mainly for the 70 precision buff in the second tier)
30 precision (dem trap talents are pretty nice)
and finally 20 toughness (gives toughness/condition damage plus some OK traits)

My runes are 5/6 Afflicted (woulda gone 6/6 but death nova on down is kinda silly since you shouldn’t be in range to get hit by mobs and since you are constantly positioning for shortbow bleed AOE’s shouldn’t really hit you.) and 1 of the nobility runes for 10% magic find for the lulz.

Weapons I mainly use short bow with a superior earth sigil, but on my swap i have an axe and warhorn with superior earth sigil and a superior sigil of corruption (i stack it to 25 then only use the weapon set when warhorn skill 5 comes up for the fury).

My auto attack damage isn’t anything to be proud of, I mostly hit for 500-600 crits (about 65% crit chance) but the bleeding is what really makes the build hurt in pve, it does over 110 damage per tick and I can easily maintain about 8-9 (about 880-1000 damage every second) or more if i get lucky with sigil procs.