Guild Wars 2

Hi guys,

Just a quick question about weapon setups and traits. We all know the ranger is pretty shocking atm and isn’t the most desirable class to have in a party doing dungeon runs so I’m just wondering which build is currently the most useful* for PVE co-operative play.

(I’m currently level 80 and using a glass cannon build with LB and SB as weapons).

Thanks in advance for your help.

*Not necessarily the most damaging.

Lol… 81 views and 0 replies.

“Thanks in advance” indeed. :/

I run a build based on toughness with 30 points in wilderness , 25 in skirmishing and 15 in pet . I think its necessary to get the 20% reduction on pet swap for dungeons and fractals .

I run SB and GS , with mostly rabid gear , and my stats are around 1200 power, 1800 precision, 2100 toughness with 45% crit chance and 40% crit damage .

I use Rune of Melandru, but this is mostly for WvW combined with lemongrass food because other then the Healing Spring i have no other condition removal .

I do quite well in endgame PvE content , and contribute quite a lot . But maybe iam wrong

Thanks for the reply, Chokolata. I’ve not really considered using a melee weapon such as the GS on my Ranger… In fact I’ve not even unlocked any of the attacks yet (yes, I am a noob). :/ Having watched some Youtube vids, the animations look awesome and gameplay-wise looks really unique too. Block ability and an evade built into the auto attack? Nice. I might look into this some more…

I run 0-30-30-5-5 with Sb and sword&warhorn mostly. Sometimes GS instead of duals.
Knight armor/trinkets with bersekrers jewel. That build is the best i ever found out and fits basicly everything.

Hey Lert, thanks for the advice. Both builds here are so very different from my
30-30-5-0-5 build. Tbh, I blindly followed a class cannon guide online whilst leveling up my ranger as I was new to the game and wanted to maximize my damage output – I didn’t even consider melee weapons… :S

Lately I wanted to get more out of ranger and now quite much spend time only on it for the last couple of weeks.
Glass Cannon is an option if you’re leveling on events, mobs. For farming it’s still good, but in many dungeons cannon ranger won’t work that well or high level zones like Orr.
For ’’everything’’ I use the same build. It’s pretty nice damage, from boons i can keep fury for quite long time (with Moa pet quite much perma) so shortbow damage is somewhere around 700-1100. As for WvW, it’s awesome. You’ve got good condition cure from traits, toughness, sword or greatsword gives nice mobilty (sword#2, greatsword#3) and blokcing/evades (sword#3, greatsword#4). Shortbow is good for everything and every build. But it’s pointless to write about shortbow, since we all can agree it’s mostly #1 option for ranger.
I’d never go for both bows for WvW. Once enemy is close, you can’t do that much. Personally I don’t like longbow at all (keeping it in bag tho, but use it like one minute/3days). Ah, both bows might only work at dungeons like CoF path1, where, with luck, you don’t have to tank much and DPS is the most important thing there.

I’ll just leave this here and remind you, that zerker ranger for WvW is not an option. Zerker thief, mesmer, maybe even warrior is, but zerker ranger is just too easy to kill and DMG (comparable to these mentioned classes) is way way lower. In other words, you won’t be able to survive as long as these classes and you won’t deal even close to their damage.

Just watch my sign ^^

My current build – crit tanker hybrid…

http://i701.photobucket.com/albums/ww15/dnicu/gw020_zpsd2917ab1.jpg
http://i701.photobucket.com/albums/ww15/dnicu/gw021_zps847a3c2c.jpg
http://i701.photobucket.com/albums/ww15/dnicu/gw022_zps163cc292.jpg
http://i701.photobucket.com/albums/ww15/dnicu/gw023_zps03cc63c7.jpg

With that setup and some food (omnom something, 100+ pres, 10%+ crit dmg) i can do almost constant 2700’s with my longbow…

All gear uses knight’s stats, except back piece and amulet…

edit; forgot to mention… my current setup is quite effective in WvWvW, it aint a solution, as it is far from perfect, yet..

Edit 2; forgot to mention, this setup is meant for WvWvW mostly, did some lvl 5 fractals today, didn’t die too many times…

Hey guys, thanks for taking the time to reply to my post.

@Kepha, interesting build, thanks for sharing. I don’t think I like the idea of relying entirely on my pet though if I’m honest… they do die pretty easily afterall – or at least they do when I’m using them anyway lol. >.<

@Lert, that’s a lot of info there – thanks very much. So in summary: the defence/survivability that you trade off for potential damage isn’t worth it with the Ranger and using 2 bows isn’t an effective weapon set up as you’re screwed when within close range. Got it. Would you mind telling me what pet you use? :P

@Prysin, thanks for posting your build too. I’m just grinding CoF atm to get myself a decent GS lol but when I get there, I’ll have a closer look at your setup.

I’ll stat of by reffering you answer to Prysin :P I do CoF myself, but it’s only for daily routine cash. 10-12min, and i get 40-70s. As ranger DON’T go for berserkers armor, it’s waste of stats (1 critical damage counted as 11-16stats). Personally I use berserkers weapons (which are waste of stats as well), but I just need that additional 9-10 critical damage mostly more than 130 toughness keeping in mind that my build has 63% critical chance and 2950 armor.
About pets: Sorry I don’t remember the exact names, but i’m not that kind of player who knows every skill, item name etc. etc.
So I use almost all the time dog and wolf. One immobilizes, 2nd fears. Both aren’t really bursty, but they can tank well (well, i mean that one lotto-attack won’t half-hp them) and both can knock down foe once every 40sec (?). So it’s really helpful for so called ‘’controll’ – one of few things ranger is better than others.
Sometimes I run with Moa or that rainbow wolf for boons. But first one is for Dungeons, 2nd for long, long versuses where I know that I got rather small chances to immobilize foe due to range (mesmer, maybe other ranger if vs was longer than 15-30sec, heh).

Partly off topic: I recorded today one action on my laptop to see how recording goes there and I might put it on YT. It’s rather meant to be for graphic test, but shows partly my build in action. Give me a call if you would like to see how does it look like.

Ranger in it’s current state can preform with each weapon and each build around the same if player is skilled – IMO.

Ofc. some builds will be easier to execute like Condi/Tough/VIt//Healing rangers with SB/GS or SB/Sword/dagger builds with 30 points in bm. – Which is tanky ranger while pet deals most of dmg ViA conditions.

And some like full zerker SB rangers need more skill to be usefull and good in pvp/pve

just find what you like, go to spvp map – mists, try different builds, weapons, pets

Lert.6287:

I’ll stat of by reffering you answer to Prysin :P I do CoF myself, but it’s only for daily routine cash. 10-12min, and i get 40-70g

Wow that a ton of gold for 10-12mins….or did you mean silver:p

Oh, I’m so sorry. It supposed to be silver. Thanks, I’ll edit it right away.
The only way to get that much gold would be probably buying some from chineses.

Hey again, Lert. Go ahead and upload your vid to Youtube; I’d be interested to see the build in action. Also.. what armour do you use? I don’t know what “knight” armour is.. are you saying you don’t use dungeon armour? :S

Knight’s armor refers to armor which has Power, Precision and Toughness stats. While say, Berserker, refers to armor which has Power, Precision and Critical Damage %

Ahh I get it, thanks. So I should get the CoF armour which has stats in Power, Precision and Toughness and a weapon which has stats in Power, Precision and Crit?

up to you, i use my armor for WvWvW…. mostly..

What sigil would you recommend for the GS – Battle?

Frazzle.8201:

Hi guys,

Just a quick question about weapon setups and traits. We all know the ranger is pretty shocking atm and isn’t the most desirable class to have in a party doing dungeon runs so I’m just wondering which build is currently the most useful* for PVE co-operative play.

(I’m currently level 80 and using a glass cannon build with LB and SB as weapons).

Thanks in advance for your help.

*Not necessarily the most damaging.

Sword/dagger and either shortbow or longbow ( I am trying to transisition to SB) seems to be the strongest/best combinations to win fights.