Guild Wars 2

Recently gave ranger a try and found I’m really having a lot of fun, so I intend to level her. However, in the age of “full zerk or go home” dungeoning, I’m really hesitant to do anything group oriented. I checked the guides sticky but some of the builds are older.

If I might post a few preferences, I’d appreciate being pointed in the direction of one of the builds there if they’re still viable.

1. I really like the bow aesthetic. Lean toward longbow, but shortbow an OK compromise.
2. I suppose a power build because there seems to be room for only one condi build in groups
3. I enjoy bringing group support, but I do the boon support thing on my ele. Looking for something different there.
4. I can do melee if it’s what groups want (I do on my ele)

Bonus points if build works for leveling as a zergling in WvW. :P Would this build or this build be what I’m looking for?

I notice the second one has a lot of info and SOUNDS good to a noob like me (longbow included) but with all the Bearbow/Bowbear whatever hate I’d prefer not to be insta-kicked if I PUG. What is the community perception on these things?

… now that that’s out of the way, I also am very confused about what’s optimal skill usage. I see some posts saying “rapid fire is a DPS loss because of cast time,” others suggesting it’s not … and that also makes me nervous entering a group.

I’m not sure if any of those guides are any good.

If your objective is to be useful enough to not kitten off your group (or at least not have to hope your group is tolerant enough to put up with you rather than kick you) you need to go melee. This is true for pretty much every class except Ele and Engineer so if you like the bow, then don’t do dungeons I guess? Or at least resign yourself to being the dead weight in the group.

If you want to be a “good” ranger, you basically need to do 3 things:

1) Use a melee weapon. Sword is best but GS is also acceptable if the root on sword bothers you. Melee is important because not only are the ranger’s ranged weapons very weak, being at range means you screw up boss positioning and you don’t get or give AOE boons.
2) Bring Frost Spirit and Spotter. Both are super strong buffs and the primary reason to bring a ranger, if you’re not using them you’re losing out and so is your group.
3) Bring a DPS pet. Felines or birds are the best DPS but squishy; moas, drakes, or devourers are an acceptable compromise if you want a bit more meat to your pet.

Here’s a guide I wrote with specifics if you want to minmax. Otherwise just hit the three points above and you should generally be okay.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/84447-the-updated-ranger-dps-guide-now-with-everything/

Trap (condition) build would be the way to go for you. Terrifyingly enough, the trap build not only pulls some serious condition damage, but it also provides CC and some group support through blast finishers (I suggest warhorn as offhand for this). We can even do some good damage normally by way of berzerker equipment or accessories, along with quite a bit of survival normally (but Dire equipment/accessories highlight this). It’s the closest build you’ll get to a “good for all occasions” setup as a Ranger.

The normal setup for it always has 30 points in Skirmishing for the various helpful traits. The passives in this line are all good, and Traits VIII and XI guarantee your traps will be able to help more often and for longer (plus being able to throw them at an enemy is useful for ranged warfare, especially in WvW). The first 6 traits it’s up to you to choose, but most of them are good.

The build also has 30 points in Wilderness Survival to help keep yourself up long enough for the conditions to do their work. Again, the passives here are useful, and my suggested traits would be IV so you can give you and any allies Vigor through Healing Spring, VII to help with the Warhorn’s recharge time, and either trait XI or XII will work well (choose depending on whether you know you’ll be dealing with more conditions or just more damage).

Final 10 points you can put either in Marksmanship to help with the damage output, or Nature Magic to help with your health and the support/survival.

Suggested slot skills to have are Healing Spring (AoE condition cleanse and regen giving combo field), Flame Trap, Frost Trap, and either Viper’s Nest or Spike Trap, whichever you feel is better. Elite I suggest you take Rampage as One since Entangle isn’t that good in WvW outside of grabbing enemies on walls, and is just horrendous in dungeons.

Weapon set, I run with an axe/warhorn and a greatsword for dungeons. WvW, I’d take sword/warhorn and longbow to guarantee you have a weapon for all ranges.

Overall equipment setup, I’d go with either Dire for armor/weapon and zerker for accessories, or vice versa. The dire will increase the power of your condition damage, along with helping your ability to survive, and the berzerker will help increase the power of your attacks and your critical damage and critical rate, which will help make your attacks more than decent.

Pets, go with Devourer, since they aggro more than you will and serve as a good diversion, and probably either a Moa for the AoE fury/protection, or a Spider to help annoy the enemies with more conditions.

Again, this is just my build, feel free to ignore it as if I’m a crazy person (which I am, I don’t deny the eccentricity~).

As for Rapid Fire…it actually does a large amount of damage in a short time as long as the enemy doesn’t dodge part of it (good luck in WvW) and you’re far enough away for the full range damage to be done to the enemy (which rarely happens in dungeons).

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

I’m not sure if any of those guides are any good.

If your objective is to be useful enough to not kitten off your group (or at least not have to hope your group is tolerant enough to put up with you rather than kick you) you need to go melee. This is true for pretty much every class except Ele and Engineer so if you like the bow, then don’t do dungeons I guess? Or at least resign yourself to being the dead weight in the group.

If you want to be a “good” ranger, you basically need to do 3 things:

1) Use a melee weapon. Sword is best but GS is also acceptable if the root on sword bothers you. Melee is important because not only are the ranger’s ranged weapons very weak, being at range means you screw up boss positioning and you don’t get or give AOE boons.
2) Bring Frost Spirit and Spotter. Both are super strong buffs and the primary reason to bring a ranger, if you’re not using them you’re losing out and so is your group.
3) Bring a DPS pet. Felines or birds are the best DPS but squishy; moas, drakes, or devourers are an acceptable compromise if you want a bit more meat to your pet.

Here’s a guide I wrote with specifics if you want to minmax. Otherwise just hit the three points above and you should generally be okay.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/84447-the-updated-ranger-dps-guide-now-with-everything/

Thanks for the link. However, I’m confused . In your guide you talk about longbow buffs and stacking vulnerability, but then say not to use it here.

Maybe I wasn’t clear. I don’t want to ONLY use longbow. That would be like ONLY using one attunement as an ele, which is awful. I’d just like to at least use a bow of some type SOME.

Assuming we’re on the same page now, are you backing out to use the quick burst/vuln from longbow to get benefit from max range, or just going point blank and eating the DPS loss in favor of less travel time?

RyuDragnier.9476:

As for Rapid Fire…it actually does a large amount of damage in a short time as long as the enemy doesn’t dodge part of it (good luck in WvW)

(These numbers are from the wiki, but they’re close enough to the numbers I got in my testing that I’d say they’re accurate.)

Longbow’s autoattack has a damage coefficient of 0.9 at 900+ range, and fires once per sec. So its DPS coefficient is 0.9/sec.

Rapid fire has a damage coefficient of 0.375, fires 10* shots in 4.5 sec. Its DPS coefficient is 10*.375/4.5 = 0.833/sec.

So by itself it actually does less DPS than autoattack. What makes it worthwhile is the 10 stacks of vulnerability. If you have the reduced cooldown trait, the vulnerability essentially makes it an almost 0.9/sec DPS skill, matching the autoattack. And the vulnerability helps increase damage from everything else.

So Rapid Fire should only be used if the vulnerability will help (i.e. target is not at 25 stacks of vulnerability), if you’re using it to track a stealther, or if you’re firing the longbow at less than 900 range. Outside of those situations, you’re better off just letting autoattack fire.

• The animation and sound for Rapid Fire is 12 shots, but if you count in the combat log there are only 10 shots. Probably they reduced the number of shots in beta and never updated the animation.

and you’re far enough away for the full range damage to be done to the enemy (which rarely happens in dungeons).

Rapid fire does the same damage regardless of range.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

1) Use a melee weapon.
2) Bring Frost Spirit and Spotter.
3) Bring a DPS pet.

This.

Solandri.9640:

and you’re far enough away for the full range damage to be done to the enemy (which rarely happens in dungeons).

Rapid fire does the same damage regardless of range.

Huh, I thought it was subjected to the same rule as the #1…which reminds me how silly the #1 is if its rules don’t extend to the other skills.

Assuming we’re on the same page now, are you backing out to use the quick burst/vuln from longbow to get benefit from max range, or just going point blank and eating the DPS loss in favor of less travel time?

If you’re going to CQC the Longbow,
I recommend trying to aim for the 500 range sweet spot for the Tier2 damage bonus, as opposed to getting up into something’s face and just accepting the loss or trudging allllll the way out to 1000 range for the Tier3 damage bonus.

For one, you’re still in general range to receive buffs from your allies and anybody ~100 units around your target is still in buffing range of your Spotter*. This is because most buffs in this game have a 600 unit radius give or take, and the impact of buffs is actually pretty substantial. Like, full stacks of Might and Fury alone will make up for losing out on your Tier3 damage bonus kind of substantial.

For two, it’s just super awkward to manage that distance from a gameplay perspective. There’s no neat little way to travel in and out of 1000 range. Hornet’s Sting is 400 units, Lightning Reflexes is 600 units, Swoop is 1100 units; nothing quite hits the mark and certain cooldowns are a pain to work with. (Swoop is the most promising if you’re adept at dropping target, but 12 seconds can feel like a dog’s year sometimes.)

Whereas Sword will get you to 500 really easy.
Just autoattack and hold the S button until your character walks backward a bit, after your character suddenly leaps towards the target, use Hornet’s Sting. This is basically using a quirk in computer-controlled player movement to reset your character’s position to 100 units away from the target’s center of mass, which is your ‘distance from the target’ as far as the game is concerned. Using sword’s leaps to reset yourself to 100 units + Hornet Sting’s 400 units = 500 units (terrain permitting). It’s real easy to get into position for your Tier2 bonus, and not so much of a struggle to walk back into melee range from that distance. It’s a PITA to try and stay that way for long, battlefield being what it is, but just as a way to get out of the fire and catch your breath it suffices.

/*(or a little smaller than the size of your untraited untriggered traps, just to give you some idea of what a 100 unit range is like. This is decently small, but it does cover somebody standing on ‘the opposite side’ of a human sized mob.)

Groups will generally accept you if you
(1) put a healing spring under their feet as they melee
(2) occasionally use a horn to give them buffs and a blast finisher in a useful field
(3) put spirits/traps etc down in sensible places at the right time
(4) help keep mobs in a nice group for aoe damage
(5) apply some decent damage while not getting yourself killed

So that’s not rocket science. Only the elites and the think-they-are-elites demand spotter and full zerker gear etc. Axe/horn isn’t a bad weapon pairing for pugs as people tend to stack in silly places where a ranger can get killed, but with an axe you can stand in a safer place and still apply dps and support.

press change character, choose your warrior or guardian alt.

Rainshine.5493:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

I’m not sure if any of those guides are any good.

If your objective is to be useful enough to not kitten off your group (or at least not have to hope your group is tolerant enough to put up with you rather than kick you) you need to go melee. This is true for pretty much every class except Ele and Engineer so if you like the bow, then don’t do dungeons I guess? Or at least resign yourself to being the dead weight in the group.

If you want to be a “good” ranger, you basically need to do 3 things:

1) Use a melee weapon. Sword is best but GS is also acceptable if the root on sword bothers you. Melee is important because not only are the ranger’s ranged weapons very weak, being at range means you screw up boss positioning and you don’t get or give AOE boons.
2) Bring Frost Spirit and Spotter. Both are super strong buffs and the primary reason to bring a ranger, if you’re not using them you’re losing out and so is your group.
3) Bring a DPS pet. Felines or birds are the best DPS but squishy; moas, drakes, or devourers are an acceptable compromise if you want a bit more meat to your pet.

Here’s a guide I wrote with specifics if you want to minmax. Otherwise just hit the three points above and you should generally be okay.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/84447-the-updated-ranger-dps-guide-now-with-everything/

Thanks for the link. However, I’m confused . In your guide you talk about longbow buffs and stacking vulnerability, but then say not to use it here.

Maybe I wasn’t clear. I don’t want to ONLY use longbow. That would be like ONLY using one attunement as an ele, which is awful. I’d just like to at least use a bow of some type SOME.

Assuming we’re on the same page now, are you backing out to use the quick burst/vuln from longbow to get benefit from max range, or just going point blank and eating the DPS loss in favor of less travel time?

Just use it while running in or when in a pug against an encounter you can’t/aren’t comfortable meleeing. Something like Lupicus if you don’t know the melee strategy. You shouldn’t be switching to LB on cooldown or anything though, but Barrage > Rapid Fire > set traps covers the majority of the weapon swap cooldown so you don’t really need to back out to max range.

Thanks for the tips everyone

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Just use it while running in or when in a pug against an encounter you can’t/aren’t comfortable meleeing. Something like Lupicus if you don’t know the melee strategy. You shouldn’t be switching to LB on cooldown or anything though, but Barrage > Rapid Fire > set traps covers the majority of the weapon swap cooldown so you don’t really need to back out to max range.

Thanks for the clarification. I had assumed stuff like Rapid Fire also required max range for max damage, but apparently that isn’t the case.

Looks like I’ll probably use GS until I’m comfortable with the fights on that character. Dead DPS = no DPS.

I’d join a guild of players who don’t mind what kind of crazy build you use on your Ranger as long as you’re not dying in two hits and do enough damage to get credit from kills. On my own Ranger I use Longbow and Axe/Axe as my chosen weapons. Not the most optimal of builds, I’m sure, but it gets the job done.

That said, I do strongly recommend bringing along a melee weapon like Greatsword or Sword/Dagger, because there will be situations (especially in dungeons) where staying at range is not a good idea. No matter your character, you should always be flexible and capable of dealing with a variety of situations.

First off, get spotter and use frost spirit. Second, use dps pet like cat. Third, know when to melee and when to bow it. And by bow I mean shortbow. You can still stay in range to get buffs but be just out of mob melee range. Plus SB helps for times when you botch up a sword dodge and need to heal up some. I use sword/warhorn and shortbow personally and do fine. I run a 20/25/0/25/0 build with full zerker and it works great on top of actually giving pretty kitten good dps despite what naysayers will say.

Nothing wrong with longbow and bear as long as you use it when soloing or open world stuff. Just not in dungeons although the bear does come in handy sometimes in dungeons in a pinch but longbow never comes in handy in a dungeon cause of the range it needs.

What is this “build” template crap?

If you’re not switching weapons and traits to adapt to the content, I think you’re pretty much missing out on all of the REAL optimization for this specific class. Some dungeons/bosses I’ll use Whirling & DPS traits. Others I’ll use Warhorn and anti-CC (and very rarely, the bows). Path3 AC & orr Temples, I’ll even use full spirit-way on… Yeah it’s a lot of Micro but this is the wrong class if you aren’t up for micromanagement.

The only thing you shouldn’t ever have to do is run Bears & Toughness armor. If Drakes/Moas aren’t staying alive then it’s not your fault, it’s Anet’s. But if the Primary Mod on all your gear isn’t Power (and the second one something having to do with Crits)…then that’s your fault. No one wants a “support/toughness” ranger in their dungeons. All they do is grab aggro from the melees and string it out all over the place. (but you already mentioned ya got an Ele for that anyway).

.

Get to practicing…
You’ll know you’ve arrived when you can clear Path2 Arah in under 18 mins, melee lupicus & the abom, and do it all while only running the Stalker & Red moa. (should be a lot easier once they get this upcoming HP buff). GL!

Disclaimer: it’s not cheating to use dagger Vs. Lupi. It’s not super pro… but it counts