Guild Wars 2

Would this be a good all around leveling build. By leveling I mean exploring, hearts, events, and personel story.

Would use axe/torch (aoe) + short bow (single target) . Heal: troll u , utilitys: signet of the hunt, whatever else you want, ulti: RaO or spirit.

For traits go 10 WS, 10 skirmishing, and 10 BM for the first 40 levels.

Thanks if you know something better please let me know. Only level 20 at the moment.

points in BM give a static increase to all of your pets stats, 10 per level. That means at level 20, with 10 points in BM, your pet will have +100 to all stats, and will be able to dish out and take far more damage than your puny ranger. Gear will not catch up to BM scaling until the mid 60s, which is probably about the time you start meeting lots of undead that ignore your pet anyway.

So, your spread looks good, but always keep BM maxed (until youre in your 60’s, then do whatever). Another thing to consider, axe is a projectile weapon, and so is shortbow. thats going to make projectile reflect mobs quite a pain.

Raven.9603:

Another thing to consider, axe is a projectile weapon, and so is shortbow. thats going to make projectile reflect mobs quite a pain.

You know, that makes me think of a really interesting twist to damage reflect and retaliation. They should make it so when a bouncing weapon/attack gets reflected, the reflected damage goes to the place the projectile is coming from.

So if you throw an axe at target A who has retaliation, the first retaliation damage would hit you.

The axe then bounces to B who has reflect up, which bounces the axe back at A since that’s the “source” of the axe directed at B. It hits A, and the retaliation damage hits B, since B was the"source" of the axe directed at A.

The axe’s final bounce does the same thing.

I think it’d be an interesting negative synergy of the two positive skill/buffs, which forces people to have to think about them more instead of just throw them on and forget about them. If an enemy party is running retaliation on everyone, you could turn it against them by dropping a reflecting wall in the middle of them, then throwing a bunch of bouncing weapons at them. You’d eat the first retaliation, but the the next two retaliations would be eaten by the enemy – you pay once but they pay twice.

If you like axe/torch, use sword/dagger in the other hand and – or axe/dagger, sword/torch so you have evade on both sets – go all condition damage, and use fire trap, and spike trap. While leveling I found its not that much useful to invest in toughness and precision. And get a minor sigil of corruption for one of your weapons. If you max out your condition damage (or power) you will go through mobs like a knife through butter.

At the start of the game year back I was using LB/GS for leveling. In free roaming you rarely fight more that 2v1. Always rapid fire, knockback and then swop with GS. Back there I went all zerker for the max DPS, and I see no reason for bothering with condition damage. You can always switch the GS to Sword/Warhorn, call + birds and then qz + sword chain do the best damage that ranger can get. For the first elite I’d go Entangle. If you go 20 points into skirmishing you’ll be able to throw the traps, which while using frost and spike traps + muddy terrain will give you on of the best control in the game.