Guild Wars 2

I’ve only played a little on my ranger (mostly play my warrior or guardian) but I’m enjoying it so far. I’ve been digging around looking at builds for ideas and noticed that most of the ones I’ve seen put most of their points in Marksmanship and Skirmish with a little in either Wilderness Survival or Beast Mastery.

I know the pets leave something to be desired, but are the other trait lines really less helpful (at the moment)?

Sort of depends what your building for. And what flexibility/survivability you want.

Pet’s properly used can inflict some serious pain/advantages for you.

Survivability is Wilderness survival – toughness – I pretty much won’t play in PvP below 2800 defense – Thief and warrior blindsides.

Wilderness Survival is also our traitable + condition damage line – necessary to maximize trap damage.

Non glass cannon and any build wanting survivability condition damage maximization is in this line to some extent for me.

Skirmishing -
Trap enhancements and Crit/bonus damage on crit(What do ranger runes give you) precision and crit damage. Power builds maximize damage with crit, condition trap builds need 30 skirmishing to extend duration of traps maximizing damage.

Marksmanship – If going glass cannon power you can use this line to generate survivability from signets plus damage in association with the skirmish line.

Beast mastery – at least 5 for the haste on pet swap – often 15 to reduce pet swap CD. Rarely 30 for a durability build. Main challenge to using 30 beastmastery is IMHO regneration scaling and rune choices in PvP. + heal runes lack vitality and crit options. and 16K health 3200 or 3000 defense with a 290 regen can be pretty vulnerable.

Nature Magic – Spirits have survivability issues proc benefits not what they should be from them it’s either to convert Vitality to power extend duration range or at 15 points share buffs you get with pets +HP. Line is lackluster but you need vitality to handle condition damage as our removal options are over time predominantly and toughness doesn’t help against those. (I get mine mainly by modifying soldier amulets)

Armor Runes and Amulets -
Amulet design in particular for PvP makes you make certain choices. I have no option to make a 2600ish defense 24K+ health +heal build. If I did such a build would be very very strong and encourage a 30 beastmastery build potentially. I’m forced to 16K health with combined regens doing 290ish +133ish every second and 3K armor 2500ish atk. Fising spirits should also enhance this option.

Options for significant vitality and toughness + power is 1 amulet soldier(base stats on this gear in PvP has the largest impact on ones performance IMHO).

At least partly because spirits aren’t fully worth it in terms of added benefits putting alot of points in that line to design around rune design is a poor return on investment.

Finally I can build a 30 Skirm, 20 WS build that can play as power or condition or power/condition damage with good survivability by simply swapping amulets and armor and weapons. It can also go glass cannon with another swap but does lack the survivability of a marksmanship glass cannon with signets.

Without going into builds those are the reasons I tend to end up in the lines you mention.

Just for pure PvE leveling, you can’t really beat a Beastmastery/Skirmish build. It turns your pet into an absolute monster. Not as effective in PvP. Longbow and axe/horn are good to complement a Beastmastery build.

I’d avoid Nature Magic, spirits are a little on the crummy side.

Ye, i agree with nldixon on the traits part. 15 points into Beastmastery are pretty much a must have for the cooldown reduction on swapping pets, makes it a hell easier for leveling and the 2 seconds quickness coupled with 15 second swaps is godly.

Either way, there is not an useless build for leveling…it’s just a matter of how you want to play and enjoy your ranger, but the pet is very good for leveling so taking advantage of the traits that improve your pet (and you) is a good idea.

Thanks, guys. Giving me some good stuff to think about.

Not letting me edit my post, at the moment, but I was looking at something like this:

http://tinyurl.com/bmqt2jw

Arrys: very well said. I find it interesting that people like you go out on your own, learn on your own until you actualy understand and draw same conculsions as some of your other smart players and do so through the use of self trial and error. The fact that you explain so well proves it. I’m the same way.

What server do you play on? I’m looking for a good guild and want to create the dreamteam for paid PvP.

Well, it would help to know what’s that build for. So far some stuff makes no sense like both weapon slots being axe+torch and then having arrows pierce targets, longbow/shortbow cooldown reduction traits.

The chance to bleed on critical hits is not that good unless you have full condition build, i would prefer pets do 30% more critical damage. For first marksmanship trait i’d use 10% extra damage when having full endurance, it’s a bigger boost than a buff that applies only when you reach 75% HP overall.

But as i said, it’s hard to give any recommendation unless you say what will you use the build for, PvE+dungeons, PvE leveling, sPvP, WvW…

poolman.7245:

Arrys: very well said. I find it interesting that people like you go out on your own, learn on your own until you actualy understand and draw same conculsions as some of your other smart players and do so through the use of self trial and error. The fact that you explain so well proves it. I’m the same way.

What server do you play on? I’m looking for a good guild and want to create the dreamteam for paid PvP.

Play on blackgate. Understanding a games systems doesn’t equal a member of a dream team;). Dream team players will play the Best classes to create a chance to win, understand the game well, have far better reaction times than me. As a game evolves they are instantly in the next best class to win.

I play a class I enjoy playing, like to understand how it works, but I’ld rather play the style I want than a WTFPWN spec of a style I don’t. Plus I lack the necessary time to maximize my implementation skillset in game. I’ld classify myself as an average player simply because I’ve seen how good really good guildies are. I’ll be at the right place at the right time assuming I’m not testing some crazy theory however;).

Elite level players in my guild seem to have stopped playing waiting on paid tournaments perhaps. Missed a few weeks when it happened but we have a hisotry of a game hitting or missing early in the guild. This one seems to ahve missed critical mass was not maintained. Having HOTM that lets me run incredibly backwards specs to figure out why they are backwards has kept my interest.