Guild Wars 2

As many rangers who started WvW from early access, our default weapon sets were LB/SB for a long time, LB for sieging and SB for roaming. Then people started realising LB has really very little use outside of battles where you can stand in one place for a long time aka defending/attacking keeps.

I myself was disheartened at the SB + QZ bug/nerf and didn’t really play GW2 for a week or two, but also probably cos I’ve been WvW’ing for hours and hours every single day since early access, burn out gets everyone ):

But then the weekend rolled in and I decided to do something about the boredom of playing a Ranger. I respecced, bought an Axe + Warhorn and went to town

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcom0zm9MoNGgmoNGgmxxa9MmRqMsao8kiI707kiQ7khV7070z7kGL70V

4 piece Berserker Armor
2 piece Pow/Vit/Tough from Karma vendors
3 piece Berserker jewellery
2 piece Valkyrie jewellery

Divinity Runes on all Armor pieces, jewels are all the same stats as the jewellery themselves.

Rampager’s Shortbow (Pow/Prec/Cond Damage)
Carrion Axe and Warhorn (Pow/Vit/Cond Damage)

Superior Sigil of Ice on my SB, Superior Sigil of Perception on my Axe and Superior Sigil of Hydromancy on my Warhorn.

Why did I choose these sigils? I do have a decent crit rate, and with the Sigil of Perception adding another 11-12% crit chance at 25 stacks, I do crit pretty often on my SB.

Sigil of Ice for slowing down enemies that are running away, and I chose Hydromancy for my Axe + Warhorn set cos well, at 900 range for the axe you’re virtually roughly in near melee range all the time, and slowing enemies down for a short period of time while Axe skill 1 bounces between 3 of them is pretty darn awesome.

Do not that any procs you have can trigger from any of the enemies that you hit, even target 2 and 3 that get hit from the ricochet from Axe 1.

I chose to put the Sigil of Perception on my axe cos my reasoning was that the axe is a small aoe weap with skill 1 and 2, so the chances that many enemies that will die will be the enemies that you have already at least hit once to gain the tag and gaining the stack

I’m doing this at work so my train of thought is all over the place, I’m sure I could’ve written this in a much more comprehensible piece but oh well :P

Nice, ty for the link.

To comment on your build.
I would use rampage as one with that.

@Khadorian, Well, the change and also being hideously burnt out on WvW, having to fight at every free minute I have after work, and the effort was worth it to keep TA’s win record ^^

The only thing about Cond Damage for WvW is that generally, some classes go the Cond Damage way as well, and the silly max stack for bleeds is set at 25, so anything above that doesn’t add to your damage. Besides, SB can be equally powerful with Pow gear and high crit %/ damage Axes hit pretty hard too, 1.2k crits per hit the average.

HOLY KITTENS

Superior Rune of Devinity are going for 4 gold 40 silver each… ouch.

krojack.4920:

HOLY KITTENS

Superior Rune of Devinity are going for 4 gold 40 silver each… ouch.

Hot kitten I bought them when they were like 1.5g a piece? Luckily I got fully geared weeks ago xD Any other comments on my build?

I don’t know, axe doesn’t really bring much honestly…yes you will slow them for 3 seconds but in those 3 seconds you are pretty much stuck with the axe that does quite low damage, if you wanted to run away there are better options.

Have you tried LB + QZ + Rapid Fire + Barrage? that’s a good burst in about 5 seconds.

RF deals too little damage to be worth it. Even with QZ it’s barely better than my SB. Plus Barrage roots you, and if you don’t finish the cast it’s totally wasted cos the attack continues for awhile after the cast ends too. LB only for sieging, roaming it’s pure Axe + Warhorn / SB.

What does axe bring to WvW exactly? It’s the weapon that deals the lowest damage and has less utility than the rest of weapons ranger has. There is no reason to switch to axe when you are already using shortbow.

Also the hybrid build seems weird, mixing 3-4 different stats. The mixing of bersekers + power/vit/toughness i can understand, but the rest seems like a waste if you build around power/crit damage. Carrion/rampager weapons are a waste with that build imo, either get berseker ones or power/vit/toughness.

As the axe has quite a short range, it’s mostly a near melee range weap most of the time. It hits for not bad damage, it ricochets off 3 enemies (useful in roaming groups), 5 stack bleeds with skill 2, a chill, a horn buff then switch to SB to finish them off, adding 2 further control skills

I need the vit on the weaps, and I couldn’t find any Pow/Vit/Crit damage weaps :P

Axe is actually pretty useful in WvW if you find yourself coming across two ppl or more. Remember that the Axe autoattack can hit up to 3 ppl at the same time with the same amount of damage. If you have high crit chance + crit damage with QZ, then it can be quite devastating. Oh and not to mention if you have the trait ability to cause bleed on crit.

But the Axe can use a slight boost though.

Definitely, most of our weapons need a boost of some kind /: And I do have high crit % and crit damage, hence why I decided to go Axe + Warhorn / SB for skirmishing and LB for sieging

QZ is devastating with any weapon other than SB. As for roaming groups…that’s “mini zerg”, you can pretty much use anything for that as most of the time your team will outnumber your enemy. You should try the axe solo roaming and see how it goes against true 80’s.

Using axe/hornbow mainly for the buff yeah, but other than that you will notice you are not really using the axe at all, skill 2 from range is like if you did nothing, the chill is decent but at the same time it’s “wasted”. You can use the horn buff when you see you start the fight and save yourself the trouble of switching in combat to have 10 seconds stuck with one of the worst weapons we have for that kind of build. Axe fits better in a condition build.

And that’s why with my axe out I go melee, keeping them as close as possible. Once 2 skill stacks 5 bleeds, 3 skill, 4 then I switch to my SB. Also roam groups are typically 5-7 in number, you’d hardly find a smaller group of opponents unless they themselves are soloing. The ricochet is reaaally useful coupled with Entangle.

With your build the bleed damage you do is very low and not worth it to go melee. Axe is pretty decent on condition builds, semi useless on berseker builds.
I’d like to see that playstyle and build on a video vs true 80’s,
About entangle, it’s a good skill against people that doesn’t have a clue, once they realize they can kill the root with an autoattack or two it will barely stops them for a second…somewhat decent elite vs ranged classes as it takes them longer to kill the vines, completely useless against melee classes.

Sleepy.2647:

With your build the bleed damage you do is very low and not worth it to go melee. Axe is pretty decent on condition builds, semi useless on berseker builds.
I’d like to see that playstyle and build on a video vs true 80’s,
About entangle, it’s a good skill against people that doesn’t have a clue, once they realize they can kill the root with an autoattack or two it will barely stops them for a second…somewhat decent elite vs ranged classes as it takes them longer to kill the vines, completely useless against melee classes.

Bleed damage may be low, but SB works just as well with power/crit builds. Same goes with the Axe + Warhorn combo cos CotW adds Fury, which is a verrryy nice 20% crit chance boon and also Might. Axe has only 1 bleed skill (skill 2) and you need to be in melee to get all 5 stacks on a single target. I just feel cond spec in WvW is extremely hard to play cos going head on in a zerg/roam group you’ll not have much chance to flank anyone with the SB.

Any thoughts? Always willing to learn and to guide!