Guild Wars 2

First off, here’s my current build: link

Rabid gear mixed with Dire for some additional survivability (please note that the build calculator does not give me a ‘Dire’ option set. All of my armor except for my head and shoulders are Dire.) The missing amulet, accessories, and infusions are intentional (I haven’t gotten those yet, and I’m not sure which infusions to get).

Here’s an in-game screenshot that provides a better representation of my stats (sans food/nourishment): link

I’m open to all build criticisms, save for the short bow. I realize the short bow is kitten , especially with the 900 range nerf, but the concept of my ranger using a shortbow is so engrained into my head that using any other weapon would severely hinder my enjoyment of the game.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now that that’s out of the way, can you guys give me a hand with solo WvW? It seems like no matter what, who I’m up against, etc, I always get thrashed. I realize a lot of this boils down to inexperience, but it gets really frustrating when it seems like I am simply unable to win. It seems like I either undercommit and my opponent heals back to full and tears me apart, or I overcommit and I end up paying for it.

I mean, I seem to manage my pets well and make use of my evades and dodges (although I definitely need to learn some of the animations for the other professions).

Can anyone give me some general tips as a solo roamer? Maybe things that gave you trouble when you were against a trap ranger? Or perhaps you’re a trap ranger yourself and could offer some advice? Suggestions on which infusions and which ascended amulet to get would also be nice. In any case, I’d really appreciate any help that I could get.

Rabid gear isn’t bad, in fact it’s pretty decent, but most roaming rangers I’ve encountered lately are running some sort of passive regen with healing power. Would you be willing to switch from rabid to apoc?

A lot of times in wvw it’s about outlasting and capitalizing on whoever makes the first mistake. I have seen a few successful full zerk rangers out there however, but if they don’t kill someone in their initial salvo I usually see them swooping away with their greatsword.

IMO, if you like traps and you like the shortbow, you should really try out some build variations with the Shamans Trinket in sPvP. The traditional apoc build is still sword/dagger/axe/torch as your four weapons, but I don’t want to tell you to not use the shortbow if you are having fun with it.

Also, I know you are committed to shortbow, but how committed are you to traps? I’ve seen a few spirit rangers in WvW utilizing the shortbow to great effect as it attacks are quite fast and can more easily proc the protection boon and burn condition with the sun and earth spirit.

With all that said, I know of one ranger who is a trapper who switched from rabid to apoc and got 6 travellers runes, then got rid of his signet of the hunt and slotted in signet of the wild. He enjoys it right now.

I play full rabid trapper, but I only run the grandmaster trait for traps. I sometimes miss ground targeting when assulting towers/keeps, but I’ve made the experience that melee classes will come to you anyway, and those that kite you, you won’t hit with traps at 600 range. I run a very similar build. I’d say you have to be a bit of a psycho to run this build in solo roaming. Even with dagger offhand it lacks in defensive utility. You’re best bet is to condi burst people before they can kill you. You can reach pertty high condition damage with rabid gear. I would switch out the geomancy runes for earth as well though. In my experience they bug out sometimes and don’t prokittenil I restart the game, and there go my corruption stacks. Also if you proc the earth sigil, thats a 9 seconds cooldown on your geomancy sigil. I have fun playing this build, when it works it melts people, when it doesn’t you die. High risk high reward (unlike most thieves lol).

Edit: My stats (with two stacks of bloodlust, 25 stacks of corruption, and consumables) as reference. 1 ascended amulet, rest is all exotics, with crest in trinkets.

Although your setup is good and all, you won’t last much against other condi builds, esp necros w/o a sufficient condi removal, aside from emphatic bond.

Take muddy terrain and wilderness knowledge, you’ll thank me later also strongly consider keen edge and sharpened edges

cyborG.3026:

Although your setup is good and all, you won’t last much against other condi builds, esp necros w/o a sufficient condi removal, aside from emphatic bond.

I defeat necros with my rabid build all day. I think they’re all running some kind of ascii / themightyaltroll power necro well build so ya, condis tend to hurt them. Sure they can reverse corrupt conditions but ranger applies bleeds and fire so fast it doesn’t matter.

Decklan.7540:

Rabid gear isn’t bad, in fact it’s pretty decent, but most roaming rangers I’ve encountered lately are running some sort of passive regen with healing power. Would you be willing to switch from rabid to apoc?

A lot of times in wvw it’s about outlasting and capitalizing on whoever makes the first mistake. I have seen a few successful full zerk rangers out there however, but if they don’t kill someone in their initial salvo I usually see them swooping away with their greatsword.

IMO, if you like traps and you like the shortbow, you should really try out some build variations with the Shamans Trinket in sPvP. The traditional apoc build is still sword/dagger/axe/torch as your four weapons, but I don’t want to tell you to not use the shortbow if you are having fun with it.

Also, I know you are committed to shortbow, but how committed are you to traps? I’ve seen a few spirit rangers in WvW utilizing the shortbow to great effect as it attacks are quite fast and can more easily proc the protection boon and burn condition with the sun and earth spirit.

With all that said, I know of one ranger who is a trapper who switched from rabid to apoc and got 6 travellers runes, then got rid of his signet of the hunt and slotted in signet of the wild. He enjoys it right now.

Apoc is interesting, but it would take me a lot of time to get Apoc gear, since AFAIK there are no dungeons with Apoc gear; I’d have to craft everything myself.

Shaman’s is an interesting suggestion; I thought the general consensus was that Toughness > Vitality?

Lastly, I’m not entirely opposed to making a spirit ranger, but I’m very apprehensive. Spirit rangers have both a wind-up and cooldown time where they’re extremely vulnerable, the latter of which happening only recently due to the recent Spirits nerf. But I mean, there’s a bare minimum of 4.5 seconds where all you’re doing is casting your spirits; in reality that number’s closer to 5 or even 6 seconds of nothing but channeling. If that doesn’t scream “interrupt bait,” then I don’t know what does. Still, it seems interesting. Do you have any recommendations as to what I should do for a Spirit build?

Traveler runes seem very compelling, but they’re ATM very pricey and I’m not sure how I’d feel losing out on my Undead runes. Still though, being able to drop Signet of the Hunt and pick up another trap, a different signet, or a stunbreaker seems very enticing. I’ll have to think about that.

nagymbear.5280:

I play full rabid trapper, but I only run the grandmaster trait for traps. I sometimes miss ground targeting when assulting towers/keeps, but I’ve made the experience that melee classes will come to you anyway, and those that kite you, you won’t hit with traps at 600 range. I run a very similar build. I’d say you have to be a bit of a psycho to run this build in solo roaming. Even with dagger offhand it lacks in defensive utility. You’re best bet is to condi burst people before they can kill you. You can reach pertty high condition damage with rabid gear. I would switch out the geomancy runes for earth as well though. In my experience they bug out sometimes and don’t prokittenil I restart the game, and there go my corruption stacks. Also if you proc the earth sigil, thats a 9 seconds cooldown on your geomancy sigil. I have fun playing this build, when it works it melts people, when it doesn’t you die. High risk high reward (unlike most thieves lol).

Edit: My stats (with two stacks of bloodlust, 25 stacks of corruption, and consumables) as reference. 1 ascended amulet, rest is all exotics, with crest in trinkets.

Oh wow, I did not know that the Earth and Geomancy sigils shared a cooldown. That seems lame…I’m not sure about switching to another Earth sigil though, since I’m not attacking with my Sword/Dagger all that much; it’s mostly for the evades and the disengage. Maybe something that increases the poison/cripple duration?

cyborG.3026:

Although your setup is good and all, you won’t last much against other condi builds, esp necros w/o a sufficient condi removal, aside from emphatic bond.

I have yet to face a Necro yet, believe it or not (the one I faced thus far was obviously new, so that doesn’t count). I definitely notice the lack of condi removal though…I’m just not sure what to give up instead.

Chopps.5047:

Take muddy terrain and wilderness knowledge, you’ll thank me later also strongly consider keen edge and sharpened edges

Interesting suggestion! Although, some people have been telling me that they’re not particularly fond of Muddy Terrain? Do you have any idea why that may be? Also, what would you recommend I give up for both Muddy Terrain and Wilderness Knowledge?

Before you fight try switching SoH for Renewal.

Also, like I said, before you invest in anything gear related, experiment in sPvP with a SHAMANS amulet and Signet of the Wild to see if you enjoy the passive healing playstyle.

Nothing is worse then buying/crafting all your gear only to realize you can’t stand playing the build or setup behind it.

I will say this though, experimenting with the Shamans trinket in spvp has made me want to slowly work towards a full set of Apocthecary gear for WvW (already have half of it crafted yes I’m one of those types with all 8 crafting professions maxed )

Also, I hate to say it, but I’m really not liking the Dire stat combination so far. I think it’s like P/V/T gear. It’s great for zerging but I truly feel having passive regen helps more for small roaming. This is just my opinion though.

cyborG.3026:

Before you fight try switching SoH for Renewal.

Yea, if I know a fight is about to happen I try to swap out SoH for another trap (Viper Pit usually) or Signet of Renewal.

Decklan.7540:

Also, like I said, before you invest in anything gear related, experiment in sPvP with a SHAMANS amulet and Signet of the Wild to see if you enjoy the passive healing playstyle.

Nothing is worse then buying/crafting all your gear only to realize you can’t stand playing the build or setup behind it.

I will say this though, experimenting with the Shamans trinket in spvp has made me want to slowly work towards a full set of Apocthecary gear for WvW (already have half of it crafted yes I’m one of those types with all 8 crafting professions maxed )

Hmm, yea I guess I’ll try messing around with it to see whether or not I’d like it.

Decklan.7540:

Also, I hate to say it, but I’m really not liking the Dire stat combination so far. I think it’s like P/V/T gear. It’s great for zerging but I truly feel having passive regen helps more for small roaming. This is just my opinion though.

Fair enough. Like I said, my entire build (except for shortbow) is open to criticism. It’s not like it’d be difficult to get full Rabid gear anyways, although I might leave a piece or two just for the Vitality.

Also, I’m not sure if you saw my previous post where I replied to you, but since you mentioned Spirit ranger, do you have any idea what I should be aiming for in terms of equipment/skills/traits?

If this is WvW, I know I made one of the guides sticky’d about using Spirit Ranger in WvW, but it is highly dependent on what you’re doing. If you are mostly just solo roaming, it isn’t that spirits are bad, but other solo classes you can go up against seem to have a very easy time dispatching the spirits.

That doesn’t make the build any less viable though, it just makes it more susceptible to the skill level of your opponents is all, and is less than forgiving. It can either be really good or really bad.

Personally, I’d recommend a hybrid mix of either Rabid/Dire or Rabid/Apothecary. Going hybrid with dire allows you to keep precision, but allow to get some more vitality in there which will help with survival.

If going with the rabid/apothecary option, I’d recommend getting either runes of speed or runes of the traveler, and dropping signet of the hunt for signet of the wild. That will also improve survival by quite a bit.

I’ll give some example links, you can mix and match as you please if that’s what you choose to do.

This one is the rapid/dire hybrid:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAV8fjAV11xVCWo2BgVBBbPyUTMZPM0xHB-j0xAoOB5cogYmUZtaWENWVakVsCpeEioaA-w

To add more precision, if you desire it, you can use the builder and switch dire pieces to rabid pieces. The reason why I only went with 30% crit chance is because of precisions primary use outside of crits being to proc bleeds. Sharpened Edges has a 66% proc chance, so with a 30% crit chance, you’ll proc bleeds at a 20% chance. Increasing it to 40% crit chance ups the proc rate to 26.67% chance, for an example. Time table wise it would either be about once every 2.5 seconds versus once every ~2 seconds. That’s not guaranteed because it’s RNG, but it’s good information.

The rabid/apothecary: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAV8fjAV11xVKWo2BgVBBbPyUTMZPM0xHB-j0BBIOCy5QCi5RKrlhFRjVlKyqVCpeFER1A-w

Same deal. The difference with this one is that 600 healing power minimum is a preferred number, because about 610 healing power gets the signet to heal for over 100 healing per second. If you are going to sacrifice healing power, I wouldn’t go much lower than 600, maybe 500 at the lowest.

The other thing is these are just references to help you out. I optimized them for my preferences for the way I play, but that doesn’t mean it will work for you, since we all have our own playstyles haha.

A universal suggestion, dunno if it will help, is dropping 10 in Marksmanship for 10 in Nature Magic for Nature’s Protection, if there is ever any trouble with bursty power classes like thieves. It can definitely be the lifesaving factor if you’re caught of guard. It’s just an offense vs defense option to mull over.

I hope any of this helps.

Rabid bleeds with muddy terrain is very strong in wvw roaming right now. Jcbroe is right about that. I run that now with jungle spider and drakehound to defeat overconfident warriors. I am very sick of their arrogance.

I think traps cooldowns are too long to be effective.. also the enemy just need to step out of the red circle and lots of clases removes conditions easily, with food ans melandru runespasives and actives, you end sitting with dmg negated and long cooldowns.

Almost all necros have the ability to transfer their conditions to their opponent on a regular basis, and the heal eats them for lunch. I’d never met a ranger I couldnt steamroll on my necro. That said, any kind of stun hurts a necro very bad.

Kilger.5490:

…and the heal eats them for lunch…

I was gonna come online to doubt this until I realized you meant that literally. Well played

Kilger.5490:

Almost all necros have the ability to transfer their conditions to their opponent on a regular basis, and the heal eats them for lunch. I’d never met a ranger I couldnt steamroll on my necro. That said, any kind of stun hurts a necro very bad.

Empathic bond is better all I apply is bleeds and that gets cleaned if tossed back to me. Immediately after tranaferring 10 bleeds to me the necro finds he again has 10 bleeds on himself.