Guild Wars 2

Pet’s prowess (pets deal 30% more damage on critical hits). This is one of the ranger’s best overall dps boosters, no matter the spec, and is available with minimal investment into skirmishing.

Trapper’s Expertise: (Traps use ground targeting and are 50% larger). This skill, especially combined with trap potency, is an obvious choice. Ground targeting by itself is useful, and the increased size of the traps means that opponents are less likely to dodge roll over your traps, even unwittingly. It also allows you to deny entire areas (node entrances and exits, for instance).

Trap Potency: (Conditions caused by traps last twice as long and traps recharge 20% faster). This is the skill that makes the build and it’s pretty great for obvious reasons.

You’ll be getting swiftness and fury on weapon swap, and 10% increased damage while flanking. Fury is, of course, always nice. While the swiftness might not seem like much, I’ve found that swapping weapons at the right time, especially while chilled or crippled, can give you just enough speed to get away. And since I run condition damage with shortbow, I’m always flanking whenever possible.

Vigorous renewal: (Gain vigor while using a heal skill). While this build has a lot of toughness, you’ll go down fast if you just take hits. One of the ranger’s biggest strengths is our evasiveness, and I would argue that the primary mechanism we use to stay alive is, regardless of build, evade. Vigor on heal allows you to dodge more, and as I’ll explain, dodging is good.

Martial mastery: (Sword, greatsword and spear skills recharge 20% faster). I went through an indecisive period regarding this trait slot but I think, given my weapon choices, the sword cooldown reduction is ultimately the best choice. There are two main reasons for this: First, that shorter CDs on sword 2 and 3 allow you to evade more often. Second, the shorter cooldown on 2 specifically grants you repeated access to a few pretty devastating combo fields: namely the burning field when leaping through a flame trap and the water field when leaping through a spring. I can usually leap through spring 2-3 times before it runs out, healing for around 1500 each time.

Empathetic Bond: (Pets periodically take conditions from you) OR Barkskin: (take 30% less damage when under 25% health.) This is your call. I tend to swap them out depending on the enemy team comp. Something to remember is that while we’ve got a healthy amount of toughness with this build, our HP pool is low and we have little access to condition removal apart from healing spring. That means that conditions will be especially effective against us. If you think you’re going to be up against a condition-heavy team, empathetic bond is worth the slot, even post-nerf.

However, if you’re not: barkskin is also a great skill. I also recommend using it if you’re just starting out with this build. These days I run EB more often than not, but in the beginning I felt very squishy and didn’t know why. (“I have so much toughness! How am I dying!”) When I tried Barkskin I felt a great deal more durable, and though I no longer use it as a training wheel, it’s still a great skill that I like to make use of when I’m not fighting condition-heavy teams.

The 3 minor traits in Wilderness Survival have incredible synergy with this build: protection on dodge roll, 50% increased endurance regen, and 5% greater damage when above 90% health.

Here’s why these traits are so great: I mentioned that most of our survivability comes from evading: the endurance regen enables you to dodge more. Meanwhile the protection will reward you for doing so (it also procs on sword/dagger evade). Finally, as your major strength is your ability to begin fights on your own terms (that is, with the enemy bleeding and burning before they get to you), you can make great use of the damage boost, because although small it allows you to frontload some of your damage.

1. Flame Trap and 2. Spike Trap. These are your main damage dealing traps. They’re great for denying areas, setting up combo fields, kiting and holding points.

3. For my third utility I go with one of four skills:

- VIPER’S NEST: Poison is an invaluable debuff to apply to an enemy class heavily reliant on healing (elementalists and guardians come to mind). With my usual weapon set I have access to only two short-duration poison procs – sword 3 and shortbow 2 – which, if timed incorrectly, can mean that your enemy will have an opportunity to heal when it runs out. Additionally, since I frequently find myself using sword 3 for the evade more than I do for the poison proc, it’s not always up even when I do find a good window in which to apply poison. Viper’s nest solves both of these problems: it’s a second poison proc, which means that even if you whiff your sword 3 or use it to evade, you can still save your nest and, with proper timing, debuff your enemy’s heal. It also lasts for longer than sword 3, providing they are hit with each pulse, while simultaneously dealing respectable condition damage.

I take viper’s nest when I know I’m going to be guarding a point for most of the game, or when I’m going to be fighting healing-reliant classes. Having a third trap affords you that much more control over a point, that much more area denial, plus all of the advantages mentioned above that come with having more poison procs. The problem with nest is that by taking a third trap I know I’ll be sacrificing my mobility unless I take warhorn or signet of the wild – and I do not recommend swapping out spike or flame trap for any other skills. So if I’m guarding henge and immediately needed at keep, or guarding temple and gate gets zerged, it’s unlikely that I’ll make it in time.

SIGNET OF THE WILD: I take it when I know I won’t be guarding just one or two points. Choosing signet of the wild allows you to do what viper’s nest won’t: namely, roam effectively. Added movespeed helps you back-cap your opponent’s home point more often; make it into skirmishes more often; and recover more quickly after dying and respawning. It also has some use in that it gives your pet a much-needed boost in a game where pets are depressingly easy to kite. However, this signet has little use outside of its utility: the active is fairly weak (although you can preload it by casting it as the match begins) and it won’t help you in a 1v1.

PROTECT ME: This skill is fantastic. Pets are beefier than you might give them credit for, even when untraited. Consequently, they can take some abuse. Protect me affords you 6 seconds of total damage mitigation. It’s best to use this before or during a big, predictable burst: for instance, warriors using hundred blades or thieves backstabbing out of stealth. In general, as a trapper, though you’re not as beefy as a bunker would be, if you’re able to outlast a burster’s burst and survive intact, you will likely win the fight. Protect Me is perfect for this. I take it when I know I’ll be up against classes that are heavily reliant on burst.

SIGNET OF RENEWAL: This is one of the few ranger signets with a decent active (pulls all nearby conditions to your pet). If you run renewal, empathetic bond and spring all at once you will laugh at conditions. Great skill to use vs. a condition-heavy team. Pairs extremely well with empathetic bond.

4. For my heal I take what is probably the most commonly-used ranger heal: healing spring. This is for two main reasons: first, the (admittedly sparse) condition removal that it provides, given that both rangers and high toughness, low HP builds are generally weak to conditions; and second, the water combo field it provides. My favorite is probably sword 2 through the spring: on the forward leap I heal for 1300-1500.

5. Your choice of ultimate comes down to personal preference, though I find that entangling roots works very well in combination with bonfire. Rooting someone (which applies a heavy bleed) and then using bonfire where they’re stuck will deal a lot of damage very quickly. Just be sure to use the roots after they’ve blown their escapes/stunbreaks or you’ll have wasted it.

- I use a Rabid Amulet, mostly for the condi damage and toughness. If you haven’t noticed already these 2 stats are the core of my build and the toughness from the rabid amulet synergizes nicely with the bonus from a full set of undead runes. Another decent choice is the carrion amulet, since it’s the only other amulet with 798 condition damage. If you’re feeling vulnerable due to your low HP pool the vitality from the carrion amulet can help, although you lose out on some condition damage by way of the toughness to condi damage conversion.

- Full set of Undead runes. These alternately provide toughness and condition damage, with the full set bonus converting your toughness into condition damage. The stats are nice but the set bonus is, I think, what makes it.

- An alternative to undead runes that a fellow trapper (and admittedly better player) I team up with frequently swears by is 2 of each of the +condition duration runes. That is, IIRC: 2 of Lyssa, 2 of Afflicted, and 2 of Nightmare. I haven’t personally been able to roll with these runes because the severe loss of toughness, but if you feel confident enough to take the survivability hit the increased duration from these runes means that you will be dealing that much more damage in total for that much longer.

1. Shortbow: Many of you reading this probably already use the shortbow. It’s one of our most popular weapon choices, and for good reason. It has on-demand poison, which as I’ve explained is very useful and benefits from your condition damage. Unlike viper’s nest you can also use it on downed players to slow their res time. It has an interrupt and an evade — two of the best things you can ask from any weapon — as well as an autoattack that benefits from your main damage stat (condition). The cripple can slow runners and help your pathetically-easy-to-kite pet land some extra hits. All in all it syngergizes very well with the class and playstyle as a whole.

2. Sword: I believe that, in the ranger’s current state, the sword is basically indispensable in spvp/tpvp. Not only does the autoattack chain, with its cripple, help you stick to someone like glue, but the evades on 2 and 3 mean that you can freely accomplish the exact opposite and get the hell out of a sticky situation. As I mentioned earlier, though you’ll have very high toughness with your runes, traits and gear, the real source of damage mitigation in this build comes from dodges and evades. The sword is worth taking for the evades alone.

3. Torch: I take the torch for one reason: damage. It does a TON of damage when used properly. Misplace your bonfire, however, or throw your torch at the wrong moment, and that damage will be wasted. It’s a relatively straightforward offhand with a few quirks; get them down and you’ll watch people melt.

4. Runners up: dagger offhand and axe mainhand, in that order. Dagger offhand gives you yet another source of poison and, more importantly, another evade. I use it occasionally but typically find myself missing the burn damage and combo fields from the torch.

Axe is a strange weapon. It’s ranged, but not as much as shortbow. It’s also got a slow autoattack, so its sustained single target DPS doesn’t match up to the shortbow, either. However, the axe bounces between targets, so in a small engagement you can deal damage to two or three people at once, unlike the sword or shortbow which are solely single target weapons. Axe 2 is a solid condition damage skill, while axe 3 gives you chill without having to use a chilling pet or frost trap.

I don’t use the greatsword. I think the evade on autoattack sounds great in theory, but underperforms in practice. I also think it’s better suited to a power build. Overall I think it still needs some buffing if it’s to perform on par with the sword.

You probably already use canines or have noticed that a good percentage of rangers in spvp/tpvp use them. The reason for this is that dogs are one of our most well-rounded pet species, especially without any sizable investment of points in beastmastery. They’re survivable, do decent damage, and provide excellent utility. The wolf’s F2 fear, for example, is one of the best pet F2s in the game. It can get someone off a point for long enough to decap it; it can prevent a stomp; it can prevent a rez; etc. The other big thing that dogs bring to the table are their knockbacks. It’s difficult to control exactly when they do the knockback (theoretically it should happen when the pet is activated, though this isn’t always the case) but it’s always helpful when it does happen.

I switch between Krytan Drakehound and the Alpine Wolf for my second pet — to be honest, I still haven’t decided which is better. While a hard CC like the drakehound’s immobilize might seem obviously better than a soft CC like the alpine’s chill, it’s important to take into account that chill lengthens enemy cooldowns in addition to slowing their movement. A good trick is to chill right after an opponent uses their heal, or right after an elementalist swaps out of water form. Which pet you use, like many other aspects of this build, will ultimately come down to your personal preference, though I do not recommend swapping the regular wolf out for anything else.