Guild Wars 2

Hello,

Allow me to say that I have done some research and I understand the basics, but there is still some fog-ish area to set clear goals on what I should aim at:

I just got to lvl 80, also this is my first 80 ever.
I understood that I should gear up choosing one of the many options:

Regarding Gear
I understand all the theory, but is there some kind of : plus and minus of each?
what works well in which situation (pvp, dungeons, etc…)
Berserk -canon-glass style, etc…
etc…

How to get the targeted gear ?
Let’s say I have understood where I am aiming for in term of gear.
Is there a better path ? (farm dungeon X, do WvWvW for days, etc…) ?

Weapons and Traits
Defining the playstyle seemed very open, but depending on the post it seems that some build/weapons set up i have enjoyed leveling really sucks in some circonstances.
Is there some “everybody knows that LB sucks in Dungeons” kind of rules ?

Thanks for your help !

Too much involved for the community here to help you. You need to tell us how you like playing the class, which weapons you prefer to use, and what your goals are. There’s at least some way to make everything work in some fashion.

For ‘optimizing’ certain things, it’s generally accepted that Sword is the primary dungeon DPS weapon. There’s nothing that comes close to it. For WvW, most suggest 2800 – 3000 armor at a minimum, but you’ll need to decide if you want to play condition or power based.

Give us more and someone here can give you more.

Trial and error is your best friend, you have time for it. Part of end-game in GW2 is taking the time to find the right build for you, if you use someone else’s you’ll just get bored.

There’s no real right or wrong way to play the class unless you’re an elitist. In which case you’ll want a different set for each activity.

actually i would advise you to take one of the proven templates or builds then after some experience , tweak them to your own taste

Use a website like this:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/

or this:

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/ranger/

To set a goal for yourself. Come up with something that suits you before perusing other builds for ideas. Then set a goal of slowly accumulating the gear, or make adjustments to gear you can obtain.

Hey thanks for the interest.

1. i have started playing with the build, which in all seems to be the less “money” involving part.

2. Gear wise, it seems that try and error will do more harm with the very high prices of stuff.

Overall I love dungeons so I guess it will be 50-70% of my time.
Fortunetly i looted during my progression a good sword (bonetti’s rapier).

I did a bit a WvWvW as well, and enjoyed it, but less…running around for the next bus is less fun for me :-)
I haven’t experience fractals yet, but can’t wait…
I haven’t experienced spvp either…but that would certainly be less of a focus for me.

Hope with this you can hint me toward good practices.

If you enjoy dungeons, then run the dungeons that provide berserker gear. This would be Citadel of Flame, Crucible of Eternity, and Arrah(which you will most certainly want to avoid like the plague). This will give you good PvE gear you can use with your sword.

You should also try and find a server that has the temples open. I’m not certain which temple has them, but the karma accessories with Power, Vitality, and Toughness are a good starting point. Alternatively you could just buy the berserker ones from the trading post. If you have a lot of karma, you could also get the armor with the same stats to use while you slowly obtain the berserker gear.

You should start fractals as soon as you can. You will need to be rank 10 before you get a shot at a ring. You will need to be 25 (iirc?) before you can get the infused rings. Each rank above 10 gives you a pristine relic. Once you get 10 you can buy a ring if you havent’ found the 2 you want by then.

You should also plan to do your daily achivements every day. You should also use the gw2lfg page or post on reddit to find a guild that is doing open invites for guild missions. You will need guild commendations to get you loot as well. Most guilds just openly invite people to partake as it’s not a big deal. May even just be able to ask in Lion’s Arch on your own server and find some.

You may also want to goto the auction house and buy some quartz. You need 25 to charge one. You need 5 charged per piece of celestial gear you may want. Will take a month to get enough for you to craft one suit. You can only get quartz via the trading post (I presume you didn’t get the achievement to have a node of your own). They’re still relatively cheap though. By the time you have enough to make a suit of it you’ll have a better idea what you want to do. But a few pieces are nice to have.

That will get you started. By the time you’re above Fractals 10 and have gotten a full suit of berserkers you’ll have an idea what you want to do.

You could go axe/axe in dungeon and still do decent DPS but if you want to min/max then you want sword/warhorn.

In general, for dungeons stray away from condition damage gear. Condition damage is very underwhelming in dungeons and can actually lead to groups kicking you if you show up with full rabid or full rampagers.

You want power, precision, crit damage. This is called berserker gear. If you find yourself dieing too much, swap in a few pieces of valk gear. This is power, vitality, crit damage. You won’t need toughness. Many dungeon mechanics are meant to be AVOIDED not TANKED. High toughness does work with certain professions in dungeons (guardian for example) but not ranger.

Decklan.7540:

You could go axe/axe in dungeon and still do decent DPS but if you want to min/max then you want sword/warhorn.

In general, for dungeons stray away from condition damage gear. Condition damage is very underwhelming in dungeons and can actually lead to groups kicking you if you show up with full rabid or full rampagers.

You want power, precision, crit damage. This is called berserker gear. If you find yourself dieing too much, swap in a few pieces of valk gear. This is power, vitality, crit damage. You won’t need toughness. Many dungeon mechanics are meant to be AVOIDED not TANKED. High toughness does work with certain professions in dungeons (guardian for example) but not ranger.

Axe mainhand is the lowest DPS weapon we have. It needs to bounce a second time to get close to the next worst weapon (longbow at min range).

If for nothing else, you should try spvp for trying out gears and builds. Its totally free, and although you can reach higher or more varied stats in wvw and pve, you can try out the mood of builds like beast master, trapper, glass cannon, spirit ranger on AI oppontents, or during a hotjoin. There is nothing to lose there, even if you don’t enjoy the gametype much.

You can finish the 70+ maps for some Exotic stuff as map completion rewards, you might get lucky there. If you have enough karma (ca. 240k) you can by exotic armor for karma, you have access to power/vitality/toughness, and condition damage/toughness/perception. But you do need the temples unlocked, might take some time depending on the server. These might be useful for mixing matching gear, and are useful for condition or power builds. Your amulet you can buy for 30 laurels. That is 10 daily and 1 monthly achievment. I’d recommend either berserker (power/perception/crit damage) or rabid (condition damage/toughness/perception)stats there. Those two will fit for most builds if you can live with not having the best in slot items. Rings and amulets are more expensive, and bear in mind, you cannot equip 2 of the exact same rings/amulets you can buy for laurels. You can however play with what type of slot it has (i.e. offensive, defensive, utility).

And of course you can craft things as well. Level 400 mats used to be obtainable easy in wvw, but that is of the past. You should be able to craft some lvl80 exotics with some money investment if you did gather mats along the way. I recommend saving the black lion salvage kits for 70+ yellow gear to obtain some ectoplasm for these, as all lvl80 gear needs that, and its not the cheapest material.

There are some cheap runes/sigils/consumables as well. E.g. you don’t necessarily need lvl80 attunement crystals/sharpening stones at first. Undead runes are one of the cheapest and work nice with rabid gear on condi builds. Or you can go with citadel runes for a power build, might be some others out there that are better too.

PvE/dungeon there is no question: berserker or assassins or berserker/assassins mix armor. You can get enough vitality and toughness from traits. If you need more toughness you can put it in trinkets.

Use the following for general dungeon min/max:

20(spotter)/25(companions might/pet prowess)/0/25(vigorous spirits)/0

And go frost spirit and sigil of strength. The amount of might your pet gets will freak you out: that’s due to fortifying bond. Fortifying bond really is a “must” in dungeons because that’s the only way pet gets buffed in a 5 man due to boon aoe cap of 5.

For general defensive dungeon play (high level fotm) play this following (yes I need to update my theorycrafting thread on that):

30/0/25/15/0

The main reason is for signet of the beastmaster. You’ll want that signet of stone and occassional that signet of the wild for additional stability (harpies for example, on uncatagorized fractal). The other reason is for offhand training. Why? Because ANET made reflection a must-have skill. Reflection makes FOTM so much easier it’s a little weird there aren’t easier ways to get it (this is where the PUGs say “just roll guardian bro”) but ranger has reflection: offhand axe. And path of scars is AWESOME. I mean, how good are ranger offhands right now?

Where is reflection necessary? Just anywhere you find projectiles. Crazed Asura. Legendary Imbued Shaman. Mossman. Archdiviner. Harpies. There’s more I just can’t think of them right now. Twilight Arbor forward/up before they removed it (lol).

thanks for all the helps and tips here.
I’ll try all of them.

From memory I have store a lot of karma 350K and I am at 22 Laurels.
i have only 13gold atm so I won’t rely that much on Lion trade.

I forgot to mention, if you go the condi route, you can have accesories, rings and backpiece for karma as well. Not sure which temple it comes from. If you go all rabid, you can reach 2k condi damage. That is 140+ bleeds. That hurts a lot. But trapper is a bit of a psycho build. You need to condi burst people down before they can kill you. It just melts people, even regen warriors (if you survive their stun/hb combo). With full rabid, consumables and corruption stacks I’m sitting at 2k toughness, precision, condition damage. I only have 1 ascended, my amulet, everything else is only exotic.