Guild Wars 2

Mighty Ranger (Dungeons/High level Fractals of the Mists)

My goal with this thread is to define the best general starting place for a ranger build in high level fractals as well as general PvE and dungeon encounters.

The premise of the build is that peak efficiency and damage are achieved with berserker stats. That means glass cannon so it must be played in a strongly positional manner. That is within reach of your ability and getting to that level is very rewarding. You must know the encounters, anticipate, and outmaneuver the enemies—evading at the right time and utilizing things like leap heals and blast finishers. This is meant for advanced gameplay.

Based on the huge, massive buff to Companion’s Might (adept trait, Skirmishing)

High precision, fortifying bond, sigil of strength, and companion’s might all work together to keep a ton of might on your pet (15 to 25 stacks might). Fortifying bond is essential because it allows the pet to get buffed regardless of the 5 person limit on aoe boons. Also, spirits form a key part of this build. They won’t let you down, I promise.

• The basic template

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=VG;4wEkx-h2wDV-0;9-8U;1JT4E-06-450;13;3LRH5L;1zxrUzxrUo-FvNJLWK;1Vd-i0o1sYzZ352o-G-2i;9;9;9;9;9;9;0V8k3y

Details

• Armor: Berserker

• Upgrade Slot: Can be ruby orbs, Superior Rune of the Ranger (6), or Superior Rune of the Scholar (6); If you cannot keep health about 90%, Scholar might not be better than rune of ranger. Of course, ruby orbs is the cost efficient option.

• Trinkets: Berserker

• Weapons: Sword / Torch and Axe / Axe (all berserker stats)

• Food: I show the soup but candy/ghost for 66% lifesteal is nice for durability with a zerker setup

You can bring longbow, shortbow, or greatsword, this particular load out is just my preference because of the access to reflection, pull, cleave, vulnerability, retaliation and weakness that dual axes offers. The offhands depend on how your group plans to blast might. For example, if you have an elementalist, you probably don’t need torch.

The sword will produce might on the pet, the torch still does good damage and allows the team to blast/leap for aura…besides, got to love the ‘Indiana Jones’ feel of the torch. The offhand axe is essential for pulls, reflects, and vulnerability stacking, and the mainhand axe allows the ranger to range.

• Heal: I almost always take Healing Spring unless I’m fighting large mobs that don’t use condition damage (krait/grawl/ascalon) but in general it’s to personal preference.

Healing Spring is probably the best option since you should be leaping and blasting it…so as a general utility heal, this is your best bet

Troll Unguent is safest bet for the ranger in mobs that don’t one shot…unless there’s conditions to clean. It’s very good against krait, for example.

Of course, heal as one for more rapid burst heals, making it better for bosses you tend to range/kite (Captain in ascalon or the archdiviner in cliffside) but I wouldn’t use it where you want aoe condition removal such as the legendary lmbued shaman.

Think on your feet! Be flexible! Work with your team! Don’t duplicate…diversify—like stocks.

• Elite: RaO or Spirit depending on fight

Trait Envelope

30 (steady focus, spotter) / 25 or 30 (companion’s might) / 0 or 5 / 10 or 15 (vigorous spirits) / 0

Stats

(fully buffed)

• greater than 100% critical chance due to precision stacks on sigil
• 118% crit dmg
• 4019 attack
• 16582 health
• 2030 armor

Notes

• Vigorous Spirits and spirits…yes you should use them. No, they won’t let you down. I wouldn’t lie to you—especially underwater. Sometimes you might want more condition removal or stun breaks so be flexible, yet I fall back on spirits for general encounters.

• As far as I know, spirits do not stack so it’s probably not advantageous to have multiple instances of spirits, assuming there’s more than one ranger in the party.

• If there is another party member providing protection, use a storm spirit for more DPS.

Pets

• In general, drakes and devourers are great general purpose dungeon pets. The drakes blast finish on tailswipe and the devourers just are survivors. If you can immobilize a single target, you can’t beat cats. If you need a tank, switch to bear and use “protect me” shout. Be flexible with pets; the ability to hotswap them for the right utilties needed in the next fight is a big advantage. What if you need crowd control? Dogs and spiders—again, be creative and have fun.
  :)

• If there’s more than one ranger in the party, try to diversify pets to fill any holes the party has. Missing fury? Red moa. Need more blasting? Slot another drake. Need more healing? Slot a pig or a fern hound.

Weird, no comments. Pretty sure this is a good build template. Let me know what you think.

I stopped reading at full berserker gear

Chokolata.1870:

I stopped reading at full berserker gear

As far as builds go, since pets don’t really die anymore when properly played, this is a great way to go I think, maybe even approaching “the best” way to go. Yes, I will go out on a limb and say that. I believe in this build, I think it works really, really well.

In high level FOTM, you want full zerk, especially when there’s guardians in the party, which there almost always is because it’s so common. Well placed walls of reflection and good positioning means zerk players live. Also, you have up to 12 s invulnerability with a drake, signet of beast/stone, and stun break Protect Me…if you want to play it that way.

By the way, here’s a life tip: disregarding something immediately because an idea you don’t like hits your brainwaves is to deny yourself the chance to learn from others. Even if this isn’t your desired play style, there’s still nuggets of truth you might discover. Nevertheless, this should be your play style in my opinion. But that’s up to you to decide. Exposing yourself to ideas that are different is a healthy thing.

Problem is you focus on pet damage with nothing in BM. This pretty much means pet will die in one second rather than 5.

ranger DPS will never be the meta because every other class does it much better with half the effort . It is pure mathematics really , ranger benefits far less from power then other classes and on top of it its 20-whatever% of damage dies to a stiff breeze in high level content .

Furthermore dungeon bosses are designed to have low toughness and high HP pools hence condition specs are far less desirable then raw DPS ones , but i digress .

Do not kitten your party by having a subpar class in high level PvE content .

Chokolata.1870:

ranger DPS will never be the meta because every other class does it much better with half the effort .

This.

You can do dungeons, and if you’re going to you might as well go berserker, but you won’t be good at it. We have inherently crippled damage because… We have a class mechanic I guess… Especially after the pet damage nerf and the loss of cheap quickness access through pet swapping (which at least partially mitigated the horrid damage difference versus other classes), it’s simply a “why bother” issue.

I have one of everything. If I wanna do a dungeon I’ll just take out anything else for double the performance at half the effort.

Chopps.5047:

• I’d use a build editor but I can’t find one with updated traits.

this one is : http://intothemists.com/calc/

ProxyDamage.9826:

Chokolata.1870:

ranger DPS will never be the meta because every other class does it much better with half the effort .

This.

You can do dungeons, and if you’re going to you might as well go berserker, but you won’t be good at it. We have inherently crippled damage because… We have a class mechanic I guess… Especially after the pet damage nerf and the loss of cheap quickness access through pet swapping (which at least partially mitigated the horrid damage difference versus other classes), it’s simply a “why bother” issue.

I have one of everything. If I wanna do a dungeon I’ll just take out anything else for double the performance at half the effort.

My drake has perma 25 might stacks in this build. No idea what “pet nerf” you speak of. My drake is a cold blooded killer. This was simply impossible to attain before. Piercing arrows + high crit chance + companion’s might = 25 might stacks on drake…

Why does this not make you guys happy? I’m so sad right now.

I’ll tell you what. How about I stream a FOTM run using this build? That’s so much easier than filming.

meikodesign.6471:

Chopps.5047:

• I’d use a build editor but I can’t find one with updated traits.

this one is : http://intothemists.com/calc/

Thank you, I will use that soon.

Chopps.5047:

My drake has perma 25 might stacks in this build. No idea what “pet nerf” you speak of. My drake is a cold blooded killer. This was simply impossible to attain before. Piercing arrows + high crit chance + companion’s might = 25 might stacks on drake…

Why does this not make you guys happy? I’m so sad right now.

Ok. How much DPS does your drake do with 25 might stacks? And how much DPS does your own build do on top of it? How long is your drake alive in a dungeon to make use of these?

Chokolata.1870:

I stopped reading at full berserker gear

You clearly never ran high level Fractals if you think anyone wears anything else there (except for guardians who usually go for knights since it goes better for them) and if you did actually wear any other stat combo, you were/are a deadweight.

ProxyDamage.9826:

Chopps.5047:

My drake has perma 25 might stacks in this build. No idea what “pet nerf” you speak of. My drake is a cold blooded killer. This was simply impossible to attain before. Piercing arrows + high crit chance + companion’s might = 25 might stacks on drake…

Why does this not make you guys happy? I’m so sad right now.

Ok. How much DPS does your drake do with 25 might stacks? And how much DPS does your own build do on top of it? How long is your drake alive in a dungeon to make use of these?

How much DPS does your drake do: I have not recorded exact numbers, I just notice that my ability to melt mobs has gone up. That’s a detailed pain in the kitten calc. I’m an engineer IRL and I am not doing math on my game time. Sebrent quit, I think, so detailed calculations are up to you guys.

How much dps do i do? Versus mobs with piercing arrows, a lot. How do you measure that? Versus single target grawl shaman with sword and cat I seemed to be crippling and doing well, almost took one down myself while the team finished another one. It’s really good at 3600 attack and high crit dmg/chance. It’s really good.

How long does pet live: FOTM 36 I had zero double deaths on pets (red moa and drake, bear for imbued shaman. My friends who play ranger better than me have demonstrated never losing a cat with good call backs so this really is a skill thing. But if you aren’t that twitchy (I’m not all the time, that’s for sure) then red moa and drake is fine. In the new dungeon I let the pets die but only because I had no idea what I was doing. Then the final boss bugged out which was a bummer.

One way you can get into trouble is to be doing much more damage than others. If everyone else is in pvt then with this build you will take a lot of threat (aggro is the colloquial term but the true term is Threat in gw2).

Btw, 25 stack drake with lightening breath bawhahahaha so so so good. You don’t even know!

Chopps is the man..Hes totally right,even tho i dont do a lot pve i can imagine these with some changes works in pvp as well

Btw heres the build ive been running now and im melting ppls faces in pvp..
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAT8XjEV91VW6Vs2Bg1j9CsvWhMZPUkxFPZFVRF-TgAg0CnIwRhjDHDOSqsUB

The things is that frost trap-Axe4-LB4 synergize so well…You can have a lot of control in the enemy…And with the Bear i dont worry to unload every cond i have with the Signet…
@Chokolata
Man,cheer up its not that bad…Try new staff dont reject em just because didnt work in the past.It takes only one small change to make a build viable

@dardamaniac- ur build is for spvp ya? Cause in wvw u would be the one getting melted I believe. Let me know what gear ur running.

Y for sPvP..i still dont have a build for pve wvwvw

The name Chopps raises red flags.

Everyone can get to high level fractals with full berserker gear. I did it too, but I wouldn’t recommend it. At least not with random people. A bunker build would have been a much more relaxed experience.

I would not take a ranger into fractals over lvl 40 ever , and i am a ranger player . You can do fractals 30-38 with pretty much any comp other then having at least 1 guardian on shaman .

And no, I am actually not gonna try new things as that costs gold and time , both of which i would rather spend playing my Warrior or Guardian in PvE now because :

1- they are much better at it
2- longbow berserker ranger is inefficient and usually a burden for the team
3- berserker longbow rangers have zero utility and the gameplay is actually quite boring .

I’d really like to discuss a Lvl 40+ Ranger Build for Fractals because I am at a loss for ideas. Before I actually start commenting on it and discussing it, I will test some things post-patch myself as I want to be able to know what I am talking about.

Yet I really hope the number of people who are seriously trying to come up with something instead of crying “don’t do it, re-roll, but I won’t test it” will increase.

And yes, I am absolutely aware of the fact that it might not prove to be that easy to find a good fractals build for us; that’s why I’d like to have a discussion.

If you are focused on stacking might, why not boon duration runes like water/monk? You aren’t always going to have multiple targets to hit with piercing arrows and the duration of those might stacks will begin to matter when you can’t constantly replenish them. Having said that, if I bothered to bring them I would probably want to have Fortifying Bond for even more boon sharing with the pet (which doesn’t work with your trait set up).

I echo the sentiment about focusing a build around pet might stacking without investing in BM. You mention drakes and bears (lower DPS to begin with, but I guess might makes up for that) but how durable is the pet to begin with?

I think it’s an interesting take on a 0 BM build that wasn’t possible before. When rangers tried to abandon the pet because it sucked, and create as much personal DPS without investing in BM they had fragile pets but better personal berserker stats. This build uses the pet might on crit trait to give the pet better DPS (independent of pet species) and apparently bears and drakes to ensure the pets are durable enough to stay alive (although in high level fractals I’m sceptical of even bears being viable for melee for many fights, why not spiders, they actually got buffed). If the pet dies, you still have your own DPS to fall back on (it’s nothing to write home about though, especially if your brother is a warrior), still better than a 30 BM build with a dead pet.

I’m not a fan of calling the pet back. Not only is it unreliable (pets have slow return speeds and insane pathing) but it has a hidden DPS cost. Every second your pet has been called back and is not attacking is time you are not doing damage. Even zerker warriors can keep their DPS up most of the fight through good dodges and proper positioning. Calling a pet back is like brute forcing to achieve the same survival at a greater sacrifice. It’s often better than a dead pet, but it depends on how much of the fight your pet has been called back and how much of the fight it gets to DPS away. It might be necessary to keep the pet alive, but a pet on passive is no different to a cowering pet.

I don’t want to discuss the might on crit trait too much because I don’t want to see ArenaNet add an internal cooldown (assuming there is none currently). It does compete with the 30% crit damage trait but I suspect most precision builds will get more mileage out of might stacks.

Chopps.5047:

How much DPS does your drake do: I have not recorded exact numbers, I just notice that my ability to melt mobs has gone up. […]

How much dps do i do? Versus mobs with piercing arrows, a lot. How do you measure that? Versus single target grawl shaman with sword and cat I seemed to be crippling and doing well, almost took one down myself while the team finished another one. It’s really good at 3600 attack and high crit dmg/chance. It’s really good.

I.e.: You have no evidence, you’re just saying it seems powerful. Let me know when you have numbers I can look at, because otherwise I’m not buying this. Drakes attack slow as kitten and, especially after the nerf, don’t really hit that hard. They hit really hard for not relying on your stats, which lets you go full defensive and still hit harder than most bunkers, which is why BM builds exist, but not that hard overall.

Your might stacking is also very situational at best. You won’t always be hitting multiple mobs constantly, nor having them lined up for effective might stacking. In fact, most trash mobs are best skipped, which would hamper your might stacking I assume.

Comparatively Warriors can also might stack (to a constant 25 as well) with less issues, less situationally, and without being attached to broken AI and crippled power ratios.

Chopps.5047:

How long does pet live: FOTM 36 I had zero double deaths on pets (red moa and drake, bear for imbued shaman. My friends who play ranger better than me have demonstrated never losing a cat with good call backs so this really is a skill thing. But if you aren’t that twitchy (I’m not all the time, that’s for sure) then red moa and drake is fine.

Just a side note: when you call a pet away, or switch between them, you’re taking a significant loss of DPS while your pet runs up to your enemy

Chopps.5047:

If everyone else is in pvt

…Why? Yeah, if everyone else is naked you’ll totally dwarf their DPS in full exotic/ascended berserker’s gear! But why in the world would anyone use soldier’s in a dungeon…?

I think forgifying bond would be great, actually, instead of 5 for natural vigor. Do this if you can find a way to get reliable vigor, say, from another player.

@Proxy

I have evidence. I have been using this build all last week to prepare for this change. It’s now even better. Play with me if you don’t believe me. Because I play. I don’t make spreadsheets or videos. You act like warrior/mesmer never worked before people posted a video of it. Live a little bit and take a risk once in your life and try it yourself.

Also, I hope to god no one else is in pvt in high level FOTM. I was making a point about boss and mob threat mechanics. They will go for the highet dps player from time to time. Just a thought next time someone dies and you call them a noob. That warrior or ranger was doing high dps and you should too.

I like how people bash rangers without even knowing their roles. I also find it funny WvW Vets in full PVT armor are trying to lecture people who do PvE dungeons.

PVT armor is largely useless in PvE because it doesn’t proc critical hits. This means less trait and sigil procs, which are important on a class like Guardian.

As for Rangers, they are the only ones who can immobilize and solo the Legendary Flame Shaman during his Bubble phase, using Entangle.

Chokolata.1870:

I would not take a ranger into fractals over lvl 40 ever , and i am a ranger player . You can do fractals 30-38 with pretty much any comp other then having at least 1 guardian on shaman .

And no, I am actually not gonna try new things as that costs gold and time , both of which i would rather spend playing my Warrior or Guardian in PvE now because :

1- they are much better at it
2- longbow berserker ranger is inefficient and usually a burden for the team
3- berserker longbow rangers have zero utility and the gameplay is actually quite boring .

Lol, guess you never tried?
Me and some friends do 48 daily and we have 2 rangers.
Yesterday we even did Volcanic at 48, with 2 Rangers, 1 Guard, Thief and a Mesmer
And yes, we’re full Berserker

1) evidence?
2) 5k hits and pets that can easily hit for 2k? sure, pets won’t always hit, but the damage isn’t that bad. Also we bring another 10% damage increase for the whole group with LB 3.
It’s true that LB sucks, but only as long as you’re not at max range
3) Maybe no utility in weapons, but we still have pets (fury, might, whatever is needed), QZ for a fast rezz or “Search & Rescue”, different traps or muddy terrain, spirits (especially the elite is nice sometime, e.g. Maw at 48 without guards)

LB does definitvely less damage than a Zerker Warrior in melee, do you want to know why? Because it’s a RANGED weapon. If ranged weapons could do the same dps as melee, why would anyone bother getting into melee?

if you play with a ranger that ONLY uses LB, yeah, he sucks, even if he tries to go max range, it’s not always possible.
BUT if you play with a ranger who goes into melee whenever he is able to do so, he’ll put out even more damage.
(ever seen a Full Zerker Ranger with 10+ Stacks might -self stacked- and Sword in melee? pretty good damage, at least very close to warriors dps, if not even better)

Companion’s might is fantastic now, I’m using it in my bm setup and loving it to death, I have no doubt this works fantastic with that trait aswell, and also all rapidly channeled skills stack tons of might on their own like hunter’s call hawks and similar, basically you have a minor version of RaO at all times

Yep manekk, companion’s might is the new “pet prowess” for adept in skirmishing with power/prec/crit builds.

Chopps.5047:

Yep manekk, companion’s might is the new “pet prowess” for adept in skirmishing with power/prec/crit builds.

Luckily for me I use both, my kitty never did this much damage before :P

Bumping this for Chopps because he at least tries, but rangers do less aoe damage after the patch than before. ST with cats is slightly better but not so much.

I must say I love the new Companion’s might, it’s finally useful. Combo it up with Sigil of Strength and Fortifying Bond for even faster Might stacking for your pet – good stuff.

Puandro.3245:

Bumping this for Chopps because he at least tries, but rangers do less aoe damage after the patch than before. ST with cats is slightly better but not so much.

Thanks, Puandro. I’d just like to politely disagree. The damage is greater, the drake and arrows aoe (as well as sword) and frost spirit is actually a great option, requiring only 10 in NM for extra spirit health and double chance to proc. Ranger now buffs the party better than it ever has and can actually replace guardian in instances where aoe stability is not a concern. A ranger does more damage than guardian in general (since guard cookie cutter is knights gear) and with Whirling Defense, reflects for the team on a similar cooldown. Not to mention protection and dps increases via spirits. Stop saying spirits are bad. They’re good. Break out of your mold and try them. I know you’ll be happy.

Can you make a template Chopps. Im not gonna comment, gonna try the build first.

Otanikun.8701:

Can you make a template Chopps. Im not gonna comment, gonna try the build first.

Oh I feel awful I forgot that! I will asap, I promise. Afk atm.

Chopps, thanks for taking the time to do this, any chance you’ve got to make a template yet?

Thnx Chopps for youre effort.

Chopps.5047:

Puandro.3245:

Bumping this for Chopps because he at least tries, but rangers do less aoe damage after the patch than before. ST with cats is slightly better but not so much.

Thanks, Puandro. I’d just like to politely disagree. The damage is greater, the drake and arrows aoe (as well as sword) and frost spirit is actually a great option, requiring only 10 in NM for extra spirit health and double chance to proc. Ranger now buffs the party better than it ever has and can actually replace guardian in instances where aoe stability is not a concern. A ranger does more damage than guardian in general (since guard cookie cutter is knights gear) and with Whirling Defense, reflects for the team on a similar cooldown. Not to mention protection and dps increases via spirits. Stop saying spirits are bad. They’re good. Break out of your mold and try them. I know you’ll be happy.

No Drakes do less AoE than before even with 25 might. I mean before you could stack some might on your pet outside of Elite so it isnt like its 25 might now to 0 might before. I dont eyeball numbers i have actual numbers to back up my claims, im not home atm but if you wish i can give them to you after work.

Also Rangers dont get even close to Guardian dps dont kid yourself. Yes Guardians run some Knight geat to be an Anchor for the other zerk players but its silly and unfair to compare and Anchor vs DPS build. DPS guards kitten on rangers while bringjng all their good utility 7-9 abilities. Guardians arent warrior DPS but they are 2nd or 3rd in the aoe dps department. Also they are the highest range dps in the game on stationary ST enemies like the shaman.

Yes you can do fine on a Ranger even if its the weakest class but thats because PvE is pretty easy.

UnClover.6719:

Chopps, thanks for taking the time to do this, any chance you’ve got to make a template yet?

Enjoy!

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=VG;4wEVt-h2REV-0;9-8I;1TO-E-06745;23;35JV4;2udbTudbTo-FvVH-6;2Vd-i0o1sYzZ352o-G-2i;9;9;9;9;9;9;0V8k3D

I’m also going to add this to the original post.

Otanikun.8701:

Thnx Chopps for youre effort.

Thanks for being a nice, pleasant person. Those are kind of rare around these parts.

looks like an interesting build. I’m going to give it a try myself. Why the Scholar Runes instead of just going with Beryl orbs? With orbs (6) wouldn’t you get 120 power, 12% crit and 84 vitality…

Gercoa.7490:

looks like an interesting build. I’m going to give it a try myself. Why the Scholar Runes instead of just going with Beryl orbs? With orbs (6) wouldn’t you get 120 power, 12% crit and 84 vitality…

More damage.

i must be missing something, Protect me doesn’t seem like a good choice? in dungeons it’d just kill the pet, in fractals again itl just kill the pet, what reason do we have this skill for?

Cool build; just tried it myself. Thanks for taking the time and experimenting after this latest patch.
Def. far from the usual bunker builds.

Has OP or anyone tried this with axe/warhorn or axe/axe?

what I hate it how much it costs to even try the build. I have most everything, I was already spec’d to pow/pre/crit But no horn, just the horn and the scholar is 50 gold. lot to spend for a test… Is’t there a cheaper horn with same spec?

Gercoa.7490:

what I hate it how much it costs to even try the build. I have most everything, I was already spec’d to pow/pre/crit But no horn, just the horn and the scholar is 50 gold. lot to spend for a test… Is’t there a cheaper horn with same spec?

I’d say any horn. Spent 1g on mine, same Berserker stats.

Again, this is not a question of whether something can be done or not with the Ranger , i could run on fractals 30 with no gear on and dance on every boss encounter and my friends would laugh and accept that . The question is if you can do it as efficiently as other classes , be it damage or usefulness .

Having a guardian, warrior , mesmer , ele or even a thief makes it so much easier to clear then doing it with a ranger …. you are light years ahead without the ranger .

And I am saying this as a 98% ranger player here .

Domino.1359:

Cool build; just tried it myself. Thanks for taking the time and experimenting after this latest patch.
Def. far from the usual bunker builds.

Has OP or anyone tried this with axe/warhorn or axe/axe?

Axe could be an alternative to the piercing shortbow for chained crits, especially if using Honed Axes (Skirmishing IX) for 10% extra axe crit damage. Of course it would only hit 3 at most, and fires much slower than the shortbow. My guess is that it could not stack might as high as the shortbow can.

You could try this by taking 5 points out of Marksmanship and dropping it in Skirmishing instead, which would give you 50 more precision (2.5% higher critical chance), 5% more critical damage, plus the 10% higher critical damage on axes.

Tagging for addition to Compilation Thread later

I’ll edit this later when I add it.

Edit: Added to the compilation thread!

RWinter.1680:

Domino.1359:

Cool build; just tried it myself. Thanks for taking the time and experimenting after this latest patch.
Def. far from the usual bunker builds.

Has OP or anyone tried this with axe/warhorn or axe/axe?

Axe could be an alternative to the piercing shortbow for chained crits, especially if using Honed Axes (Skirmishing IX) for 10% extra axe crit damage. Of course it would only hit 3 at most, and fires much slower than the shortbow. My guess is that it could not stack might as high as the shortbow can.

You could try this by taking 5 points out of Marksmanship and dropping it in Skirmishing instead, which would give you 50 more precision (2.5% higher critical chance), 5% more critical damage, plus the 10% higher critical damage on axes.

Also works with longbow barrage, and rapid fire. Can also work with sword/horn, sword/axe, and GS. But I guess the shortbow is best for getting consistent stacks.

Gercoa.7490:

what I hate it how much it costs to even try the build. I have most everything, I was already spec’d to pow/pre/crit But no horn, just the horn and the scholar is 50 gold. lot to spend for a test… Is’t there a cheaper horn with same spec?

Ruby orbs and zerk rares is still huge DPS.

Run a bunch of CoF and get zerker gear via tokens and use the gold to upgrade to scholar runes. Make sure you eat omnom or raspberry bars

That’s how I started when I was a wee little ranger like you.