Leveling build
Pets: Brown Bear + Arctodus (best tanks and do decent damage) – You want a tanking pet.
Longbow/shortbow
Skills:
Any heal is fine. I use healing spring for WVW, troll unguent is probablybest for leveling
Protect Me
Quickening Zyphr
Lightning Reflexes
Elite (lv 30) – Entangle
Stacks mobs and barrage them down, then swap to shortbow and single target them, have your pet tank, if you are low on HP use your survival skills and make sure you pet swap if your pet gets to low health (makes it so it is only 20 second CD instead of 60 second CD, if it were to die)
Welcome to GW!
The biggest tip I can give to anyone leveling is to experiment with different weapons and builds. It’s cheap to change your build, so don’t afraid to try anything that looks interesting.
However, if you’re looking for something that’s more efficient, then short bow, longbow or 1h sword+torch are good main weapon sets. If you do use the 1h sword, turn off auto-attack to prevent getting stuck in the animation (it’s pretty annoying at first, but gets better as you get used to it).
For talents, you can’t go wrong with a good investment in Marks and Skirmishing since they will give you power and precision. However, I would also recommend grabbing 10 points in Wilderness Knowledge for the reduced cooldown on Quickening Zephyr (awesome ability for any build). Also 5 points in BM is useful for the quickness on pet swap.
I am currently leveling my ranger. I use the combo of Pets: Brown Bear, Arctodus & Longbow/shortbow 99% of the time in PVE.
I do swap out pets and in some situations use ranged spiders.
I generally rung three traps now – fire trap, vipers nest & entangle along with signet of the hunt and either troll ungent or healing spring. Works well for me.
Troll Unguent is a ton of healing, but it gives zero burst healing. Stacks with regen though (Fern Hound, go!).
Bow/GS was what I used most of it. GS+Quickening Zephyr lets you just spam 1 with the near-constant evasion, and GS has solid defensive skills in 4 and 5. Both bows offer interrupts. Longbow with points in the first trait line is nice – 15 points and you can open every fight with 20 stack vulnerability on the target.
my suggestion is SB/double axe, traps, conditions and BM.
suggestion for pve/leveling only:
My past mmorpg experience: EQ1 (m first love) , DAOC (pretty much played like an early version of GW2), Shadowbane, EQ2, CoH, DC Universe, LOTRO, and WoW.
First off do yourself a favor: Forget longbow unless you are in a boss fight or some other situation where you know you absolutely must be as far as possible from what you are killing. When I was using longbow/shortbow I would have to pack it up and run if I pulled to many because even with piercing arrow they are still just so/so at multiple mobs. Shortbow plus Axe/Torch (ground fire) and the fire and frost traps are your leveling pve friends. I’ve seen some very fast killing rangers using axe/horn in combination with fire traps as well and I suppose an argument could be made for that combination as well but… it’s not nearly as much fun.
You can’t help but do more single target damage consistently with a shortbow unless you are always able to keep max, max range with the longbow… Plus certain skills go off of crits and with the short bow and axe/torch you are firing very rapidly so more chances for crits.
Most pulls are usually 2-5 enemies (unless you want to take the time and try and individually pick them off – but again this is very slow)
The longbow is bad for 4 reasons (usually) although it is fun to use:
1.You must be as far as possible away from the mob to get the most damage (which means lots of lost time damaging mobs while you get to where you need to be). Which means you’re getting in less DPS (damage per second). In dungeons you will often see people running around like crazy people (usually trying to buy time for skill timers to reset or avoiding those red circles on the ground – good luck getting anything like good damage with a long bow while trying to do that).
2. Every time you go to loot you have to run all the way back. Don’t be that guy.
3. Loose out on the synergy (important word here) you get when combining weapon attacks with fire and to a lesser degree frost traps. They call this a combo field and most times when you use it correctly the in game voice says something to the effect of “what a glorious combination of skills”. It is not about trap damage. Which is why for leveling the spike and snakes traps won’t really do you much good. You do not have to spec into this trait to get tons of bonus fire damage. It’s about max damage to as many enemies as possible as quickly as possible. It is very easy to kill multiple mobs by dropping a fire trap (or preferably the Torch ground fire skill) on them then hitting them with all your axe skills (which are pretty much AOE skills that stack additional fire dots on the mobs).
4. The #5 skill (the AOE) barrage is way fun when you are starting out but kinda lacking in damage and you have to stand still while it’s channeling. Which means it’s looks way cooler than it actually is. In fact I’d say it’s usually pretty disappointing and not nearly as effective as Axe/Torch/Traps for multiple targets. The only thing it has going for it is that you can be further way with the longbow skills. Slowwwwww
In my early levels I was all about the longbow cause I was worried about being squishy but as I got into my 30’s or so I began noticing my pet usually takes all the agro and I have a HoT (heal over time) that almost always keeps us both alive (my experience with the AOE heal over time has been that for the most part it’s not very useful since everyone has to move around so much and it doesn’t heal for all that much compared to the self/pet heal over time – especially if you trait for the 33% increase in duration). Plus the time it was taking me to kill multiple targets with my longbow was taking longer and longer and longer. I started to notice that with the shortbow I don’t get the chunk style drop in health of the enemy that is exciting to see but instead the mobs health would melt like butter (and faster as well).
I run primarily Axe/Torch with shortbow. This is an amazing fast pull/kill style.
I put points into piercing arrows as soon as I could which definitely helps my shortbow dps. Plus it’s quite satisfying when you do this.
Enough about longbows. Bring em to WvW or when you wanna mix things up.
One thing I love is stacking fire dots with my Axe/Torch. Most mobs will focus on your pet (usually) and so you can get up close and personal. I generally drop a fire trap on top of the mob(s) and then my axe (which is amazing aoe (ish)) will spread the fire around. Same thing with chill affects and a poison gas from one of my pets. I am leveling way faster than my warrior ever could and can handle a fairly large groups with no problem. Usually.
Pets:
2 bears.
2 jellyfish.
jellyfish = regenerate health.
(edited by Bloodworks.6308)
For pve i usually run spider and bear or another tanky type pet, with LB and sb. The key to using lb and sb in pve is to know your cooldowns and switch weapons frequently. Stand there just firing one and you are missing the point (as well as gimping your damage).
I find trap damage meh as i have not specc’d for it.
Open with barrage from max range, place the far edge of the circle at the mob’s feet so they stay in the field of effect for the max time, then LB 3, lb2 and if the mob isn’t dead yet switch to sb, sb2, sb1 (auto) by now the mob is dead.
If you move slightly backwards in pve you can line up mobs, target the one furthest away and watch them all die to your bow attacks whilst your pet tanks them.
Sharks is great underwater, but your own skills underwater are awesome- number 3 damage aoe is great, and in wvw u can fire this at people from under the water who are standing on the bank;-)
Troll unguent is you are your pets friend, and remember, switch the pet before it dies!
Unless you like conditions, equip that sig (lazy sig), the running speed one for open pve, toughness one and rampage as one.
In wvw atm I’m tending to use the protection spirit as it’s not terrible and benefits an area, lasts a minute and can be used to cripple/immobilise people too.
Heal over time
Axe + Torch
Bears
Run Speed
Fire Trap
Venom Trap
Rage
5 pts into BM. Swap pet every 20 seconds for speed boost.
Use this till you can get ranged traps then use shortbow. Stick with axe+torch for swap for if you ever get entangled.
Sorry about the above skill names, don’t play this class anymore and moved back to roomates Warrior mostly.
I played BM Tank all the way to 80 for my second ranger. Holy cow it was so much easier then condi trap build for lvling.
The amazing thing about ranger is that through your pet you can still do pretty substantial damage while you focus purely on defense, regen, and healing. There have only been two champs i have been forced to retreat from (not defeated) and most group events I have soloed.
Final build was 0|0|30|10|30. Get regen bonus, healing spring, and BM bond, and which ever signet grants regen. I have healing runes on my armor now, cleric jewelry, and vital/tough/power armor/weapons. It makes for a pretty sturdy bunker build while keeping DPS via pets which are also pretty sturdy (wolves). I’ve been designated tank the last couple dungeon runs I’ve done.
Weapons: short bow & axe/warhorn
Pets: Bears (Brown & Murellow)
(edited by Singh.8206)