Guild Wars 2

Hey there rangers,

Decided to put together a melee ranger roaming compilation, having tried it in my last duelling video and wanting more, I opted to make it much more versatile. This setup can be used in a team to get the enemy’s attention and kite while your teammates damage, or like in the video, as a highly mobile duelling/solo roaming spec.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gK2hQFrU0hc – Enjoy!

Build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAR8YjEq0yaHLGsQ1agDhq9K8BjA71NASAXDBA-TlxHwA9U+FS9nT7P4V3AgnAATlgkCYJlRA-w

The video isn’t meant to showcase the build, but rather the play style of a melee ranger; hard to catch with plenty of evades. I wouldn’t class this as a potential meta build, even with the high amount of evades, you still need to DPS and be in your opponent’s face. That’s dangerous work, especially if you don’t hit like a glass cannon so don’t be expecting to beat everything you come across. Not that I’m trying to sell the build/play style short, it’s good fun and something I’d recommend trying, although after the patch. The balance changes might bring some welcome to changes to this type of play, it might not. Regardless, if you do like the look of the build and would like to start making it, I’d advise you wait until the patch hits. The build itself is very flexible so I’m sure you could easily find a variant to your own tastes but I reckon this is solid to go with as it can work both in a group and solo. I wouldn’t mind sacrificing some of the tankiness while solo roaming mind you, as it can be very difficult to maintain damage.

Personally, I feel as if roaming is at a low point as there was very little variety of builds I came up against, the majority being condition necromancers (I know, sounds weird. Also I’m on Gandara EU). I’d like to upload another video showcasing the play style against guardians, engis, eles and other rangers and perhaps more of the other professions, but I’m finding it really difficult to come across them, ones which give an entertaining fight at least and whereby the odds are either even or in my opponent’s favor as well as being a relatively short fight (stacking sigil or guard stacks).

Feedback is welcome, particularly on the last clip; was it too long? Too boring? I don’t often leave duels in of that length, but it was a lot of fun. Rare I get fights these days of that magnitude. Anyway, enjoy!

great job mate. nice gameplay and build.

haha, you’ve got my respect.

WoW, I enjoyed this video Alot…. Never saw a ranger that use GS with such talet, you even spend more time in GS than with your other s/x setup and make it look legit, great job. Also loved how you dominated d/d eles like a boss and your thoughest duel was vs a fellow ranger(and a LB ranger) just epic(BTW, i think i duled vs te same ranger yesterday on OS, i remember the unique playstyle with bear and siamoth).
How do yo preform vs warriors/gurdians and other tanky proff/builds that specialize in close combat?
looking forward to see more of this setup especially after patch which will make your build much stronger.

Thanks for the upload, that was some great gameplay.

Wish I didn’t suck with the GS else this’d make me want to use it a lot more often…

Most enjoyable ranger video I’ve seen in a long time.. thanks

Nice build, wonderfully played, honestly I’m a little bit jealous of your GS prowess. I’ve got a GS S/D build I play now and again, and whilst I can wipe the floor with any other melee opponent with it I really stuggle against ranged classes like mesmers or other rangers, so it was nice to see someone doing it so well

Solid play. Your evades and skills are very well-timed and you don’t waste any time. But I have to say a lot of your opponents seemed kitten without the ability to constantly run away to reset the fight at every opportunity. Haha, well played regardless.

You magnificent thing you! It’s always very satisfying to see a power ranger do all these amazing things, owning and pwning :> I’m happy to hear that at least one person got inspired by my bouncing and got converted into a melee ranger. Your playstyle is a lot more aggressive than mine for sure as I tend to be very careful and overly defensive at times, but then again I don’t really solo roam nor do duels these days anymore.

Can you recommend me a pet for this build?

Marvellous! Loved the video!

I’d put the 2 pts into Malicious Training rather than Strength of Spirit though. Seems like you’re surviving well enough to not need that extra vitality.

Thanks for the video! Excellent gameplay and fantastic build!

Were there any special tweaks you made when changing to axe offhand (i.e. different traits, pets, gear stats)?

This is what i run, albeit with a different rune set. I use traveler runes and instead of the SotH i use SoR. Sometimes i switch 30 points into NM instead of skirmishing to mix things up. Much better condition removal.

Thanks for the feedback all & glad you enjoyed it, appreciated.

@Lugh
I really didn’t come across that many melees. One warrior fight just ended up in stalemate and I won against a guardian but i had buffs and he didn’t so I didn’t include it. Other than those 2 there were no other melee fights I had recorded. I do however have a video purely against warriors up on the channel if you wanna check that out.

@Alex
Depends on your opponent, although my pet’s main use is to absorb my conditions so it needs to be tanky, duo spiders work great because they dish out a lot of immob and poison which also works as a combo field, if you’re lucky or fast enough you can leap through it for weakness or dagger #5/GS #4 for moar poison. Still, if you see you’re not up against a condi heavy class, Raven and Wolf work great.

@Kiwi
Aye that’s a good alternative.

@Yams
In the clip against the condi ele, I was using some odd variant which I only used in that fight. I just threw my zerk armour on with Runes of the Ranger as well as healing spring, thinking I could get my drake to blast while I also leaped through it and standing in it for condi cleanse. Seemed to work against the guy, although honestly I haven’t used it since. As for the final fight, I knew that most of the damage from the ranger would come from longbow, so I used Soldier’s weapons to soak up some more damage while attempting to close the gap. Traits stayed the same, although I put on Strider’s Defence over Moment of Clarity as trying to land Hilt Bash and an interrupt against that type of opponent is extremely difficult, even if Strider’s Defence is woefully weak, it helps more in that situation. If used right, axe offhand can be pretty effective. I spoke to the ranger after the fight and he said the Path of Scars into Whirling Defence hurt him good.

nice vid! reminds me of my all time favorite ranger roaming video (also a double melee)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfEWpvAlu68

I used to run double melee (a natures voice varient) but have since picked up a shortbow, as melee was giving me trouble against certain very common matchups, namely

• warriors who stand inside Longbow burst all day
• necros (fear + perma chill is a lot of kiting power)
• bomb kit engies
• PU mesmer (kiting ability depends a lot on the skill of the mesmer)
• d/d ele (another chill heavy class)
• longbow rangers who actually know how to kite well (not many of these).

shortbow was a huge improvement for me with its ability to interrupt most any heal, and take away nullify the kiting advantage of the above classes, but its not nearly as “fun” as double melee. i noticed you didnt fight any longbow warriors. the engie you fought was a little lacking. some good necro fights but none of them managed to fear lock you. (edit: ill have to check your channel for that warrior vid you mention).

definitely looking forward to more from you, keep up the good work!

so jungle spider + cave spider?

@Fox
Watched the entire video and enjoyed it(kudos^^) i see you used a very different setup in the this video, sigents and lots of might stacking. Which build do you like more? After patch do you have plans to try and combine the might stacking build with the “condi def/evade build” to create 1 build to rule them all?
Somthing like that: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAR8XjEq0waFLGsw1iA/gaZDEAt7hYoGYNBvu2LWpEJ-TVyHwA8VLgpSweK98pMYwTAwruB/q6Ia/BAXEASBwkwI-w
You can probably MinMax it more but you can the main idea(only theory crafting not sure its functional)

Whirling defence is a very hard counter to lb ranger, the glassier they are the worse it is for them! Looking forward to getting home and watching this!

This style cannot touch PU mesmer and PD condition thief, the two prevalent setups you will encounter as a roamer. At least this has been my experience

Chokolata.1870:

This style cannot touch PU mesmer and PD condition thief, the two prevalent setups you will encounter as a roamer. At least this has been my experience

his video included numerous duels against PU mesmers. I agree that there are better options but he made it work.

As far as thieves, with 6sec sic ’em, a more bursty version of this playstyle should be able to handle them, and certainly no p/d thief is going to be able to give a serious chase to a double melee ranger if the ranger decided not to be bothered fighting with what is probably the least respected build (thief pd) in the game.

Really liked your video, hope to see more. I would love to see you take my build for a spin in wvw.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fNIQNBlYDbkRlOWbZxfFuWDkIUsCg3RRwOzuX3UIqTY1hNG-TFTDwAMeAA9U6N5IAwSHwTlBvU/pyBBAkmBMXAAFKBBY653+DBAOAY6AhAYPBA-w

Liked the video, but the build has 2 things that really didnt make sense to me.

Pets Prowess with spiders? Wouldnt malicious intent be a better option for this?

2nd being moment of clarity – i cant stand this being a 6 point investment for 1 second more on hilt bash… if it lands.

Im thinking malicious intent and spotter would work better for your setup?

Three Minutes

am i the only one who is not impressed? i did bash my hand nearly every 10 sec against my forehead. the thiefes and the necro in the JP played really really bad. absolute wrong timing / no evades, bad use of important skills like fear and basi venom ecp pp. the open world roaming is hard to comment coz the player skill / and build is always hard to tell. the last fight again the ranger did show me that he was a way better player with a bad build. with my LB/GS build he would have destroyed you.

pro: you did evade all the important skills ( this can make your enemy look worse then they really are ) and your control of the GS is really impressive. for me it is just a finish off / run away option ( 100% bersi 6 6 0 2 0 )

keep playing power ranger and keep improving. always love to see other power rangers around.

Thanks again for the feedback all.

@Lugh
Thanks. Hard to say, although the glass spec is much less versatile. It could probably be tweaked to have some condi cleanse while still maintaining a high amount of might stacking & DPS, I’ve just never tried. And yes, I really do have plans to combine the might stacking/defensive sides of both builds after patch because that Signet change is huuuuge. That build you linked looks like an interesting post patch build, I’ll likely be tinkering with something similar.

@Alex
Yeah, can swap out either for jungle spider also.

@Raven & Chokolata
I did run into many P/D thieves and found out pretty quickly this build can’t handle them. I beat one, but I get the feeling he’d not long been using it and/or not been in WvW for very long so decided not to upload.

@Nagym
Looks like a risky build, I likey. Although I’ve blown near all my money on gearing & levelling characters and I haven’t farmed in a long time, instead I just slowly drained my wallet of the gold I got from a forged precursor. Now I’m poor again (welp). There was however an asura ranger I remember from a while back (about a year ago now) who’s build was really effective. I never spoke to the guy or saw his build so I tried to recreate what I remembered seeing. Funnily enough, it was SB/Sword+WH with an owl and most of the same utilities. Might be something I try to pick up in the future, thanks.

@Dead Muppet
The Skirmishing traitline is pretty bad and I changed my pets often, Pets Prowess is the best I could use. Do you mean malicious training? If so then yeah it’s a good trait, like I said the build is very flexible and looking at it now, the 1k sacrifice in HP & Rejuvenation might be worth it but I normally used my pets as a sponge so don’t really invest in them. Pets Prowess was just my only other option in Skirmishing. MoC is an odd one and I use it mainly for the spike from Attack of Opportunity but like you said, it’s hard to land and not all that reliable. If it does land however then it can change the course of the fight. Skirmishing traitline was mainly for the Prec&Ferocity as well as the minor traits as my fury & swiftness upkeep becomes pretty good. Hunter’s Tactics is also pretty effective. Something like 4/4/6/0/0 could work well though.

@Coarr
Cheers. Although I don’t think many compilations/montages paint the player’s opponents in a good light. I’ve watched a lot and have been like “How did you not dodge that eviscerate??” or “That guy didn’t even dodge Earthshaker” or “That guy should have seen the Burning Speed combo coming a mile away”. Like you said, dodging my opponent’s skills doesn’t mean they’re bad nor does it make me good. When up against a melee ranger, I doubt many people have it in their head what needs to be dodged. Maul perhaps but that’s up again in 4 3/4 seconds and despite having a telegraphed attack, it activates in 3/4 of a second, not a lot of time to react.

Ah, it warms me heart to see a Ranger who knows what they’re doing.. I love Ranger so kitten much and it always makes me so happy to see people who are actually competent with it. So many people and their “Ranger’s are bad” blah, blah, lol.
Great video! I also enjoyed the relaxing music (: If you haven’t done so already, I would really like to see a video like this but using a trapper build. Personally I roam with full traps and get along quite nicely with it, but I think you’d do better than I would. So I would like to see someone who knows what they’re doing better than I do so I can study a bit, yenno!

Consider using the fern hound as an alternate pet with the spider being your primary. Its F2 is fairly useful in bringing up your sustain if you are not using HS. Also its a dog and they are useful regardless of traits.

But I agree with you, the Skirmishing line is rather horrible. Have you considered going 2 into MM and 6 into NM instead. With the next patch signets will become far better and you can get a good uptime of stability and more condition removal and fury uptime with SotF.

Something I discovered while using a similar build in PvP:

The offhand axe can be an effective counter to burst guardians who come at you with a sword. They’ll typically blink in with flashing blade, and then use zealot’s defense to hit you pretty hard.

However, if you pop whirling defense just as they use zealot’s defense, it will reflect all the projectiles it shoots. Because they’re reflected projectiles, the guardian’s skill won’t block them. This allows you to use their own skill against them while they are taking damage from your whirling defense due to them being locked in place.

A smart player will probably try to change up their skill rotation or whatever so they don’t do that to themselves, but it can be a nice way to shut them down if you end up facing one. Just have to make the right read or react to what they’re doing so you don’t waste it.

You can also use it to defend against some guardian greatsword attacks, but I found it more worthwhile to try and counter the zealot’s defense with whirling defense.

coarr why be so negative? i mean sure the players he fought werent top-notch but they hardly ever are. and i dont think you really have a right to complain about his build, while you are still using your old power/regen ranger with pirate rune, if i am not mistaken. a good advice: we may be going up against gandara soon in a marchup, so go duel him, beat him and then complain.