Guild Wars 2

Hi there rangers!

Just came back to the game after 2 years almost because i got hyped for the new expansion. I decided to reroll a class that i never used before, the ranger, and i felt in love with it.

Im not very sur about the roles that i can cover with this class both in PvE and WvW.

Neither am i about the build that i should follow. I didnt find anything updated on the forum about levelling the ranger right now (i just dont want to boost up) so i am asking to you guys any tips before wasting my points..

Thank you all for the reading and the answers!

EDIT: i bought the game back at launch but i do not have HoT :/

Welcome back.

What role would you like to perform? Ranger can do many in varying degrees of ability. Knowing that will give you an idea of what you want the character to achieve and that will lead you to a build you are comfortable with. You shouldn’t just “follow” a build, you should enjoy it and understand it.

You can pretty much do anything during levelling, just stick to one damage type and the stats to suit, power/precision or condition damage. Unlock everything and play with everything to get an idea of the playstyle you prefer. Axe/Torch is vastly different to Longbow for instance. Once you know how you like to play it, then worry about a build and gear.

Good luck!

That’s exactly the mindset that i want to keep while playing gw! But please just say to me wich skills shall i DEFINETLY unlock sensei

I will experiment everythig tho.

llSmokyll.6239:

That’s exactly the mindset that i want to keep while playing gw! But please just say to me wich skills shall i DEFINETLY unlock sensei

I will experiment everythig tho.

Seriously, just unlock everything as it comes, try it out, learn it’s mechanics and usefulness. There isn’t a great deal during levelling to 80 that you need anything specific for. Don’t look at lvl 80 as the goal, unlocking and learning all the skills is the goal here.

Also, don’t forget to get all your pets as you move to the different maps.

reroll, that is all. In wvw people will kick you out, yell at you if you bring a ranger. You will be kicked out of any serious group, you will be an outcast. For open world PvE is alright, anything works there.

Ranger is OK if you want to play healer for others in group content.

For dps route other classes can and will do 2-3 times more damage than you.

You will be able to do fine in solo’ing champions and even legends though, but with other classes you can do as well, but harder since no pet to tank for you.

In short, if you want to play in groups, you will want Druid and healing items set. Talking about end-game.
If you want solo and casual player – ranger is fine, then. So it depends what player are you.

NemesiS.6749:

reroll, that is all. In wvw people will kick you out, yell at you if you bring a ranger. You will be kicked out of any serious group, you will be an outcast. For open world PvE is alright, anything works there.

Such awesome input.

Bratec.7136:

…For dps route other classes can and will do 2-3 times more damage than you.

In my experience, this happens a lot less frequently than people think. Just because a build can possibly do 2-3x more damage on a large hitbox golem that is standing still while you have every raid buff possible, doesn’t mean it’s like that all the time.

Unless people are getting those rotations perfect, then the DPS is significantly lower, whereas with a Ranger S/A there is no rotation, you just AA and use your buffs off CD. I’ve out damaged power staff eles so many times it’s not even funny, because they can’t play it as well as those that post the benchmarks do in that particular video they practised for 5 hours to make perfectly.

_

Yes, try out healing Druid and condi Druid, try WvW roaming as Ranger excells at that too. Open world is easiest on Ranger by far, huge mobility (learn your 1h sword leaps using “about-face”) and things just melt to core zerker Ranger with LB/GS.
It’s just fun to play and pets are nowhere near as bad as people make out, they have their issues but you can learn to play around them. It’s a fun class, treat is as such.

What is awesome about the ranger to a new/returning player is the… range

I’m using the longbow and having to stay the kitten out of all the HOT bosses while raining arrows on their heads feels great. I am usually one of the few survivors after a nasty AOE hits the group and busy getting the others on their feet.

Don’t listen to the people suggesting rerolls and telling things you ’can’t do’.
You can play ranger perfectly fine, the dps people keep talking about, and it being 2×3 times lower than other is just a load of b/s. rangers are within the 29-33k range on benchmarks, which cover 90% of specs. there are a few specs that outperform everything in this 29-33 bracket, but honestly, nothing in this game needs that much optimising or nit-picking.

If you just want to do Open World PvE content, some Wvw, dungeons and fractals than you can play both a dps ranger, a support/dps druid and a support/heal druid. For WvW you even have a ’Bunker" druid build, which is basically a very tanky and durable build.

For gear while leveling:
- Just focus on getting gear with power +precision/ferocity gear (also known as Berserker stats/gear)
- I really liked the Greatsword/Longbow combination when leveling and still using it in Open World.
- Greatsword and Longbow are by no means our best weapons, but for Open World I rather either kill a target very quickly (Greatsword = Burst damage) or stay at a distance (Longbow)

Specs to unlock:
- I’d say if you go with a Greatsword/Longbow setup you’d want to go for marksman first, and go for skirmishing and beastmastery after that.

For skills while leveling:
- you will definitely want to get the Signet of the Hunt for a nice 25% movement speed boost (don’t use the signet, just equip it).
Adding to Signet of the Hunt, you can use Signet of the Wild for some more dps, or have Signet of Stone for some more defense while leveling
- While leveling it is very usefull to have a Stun Break abbility, the 2 best ones are Lightning reflexes (Survival), this breaks a stun, does some damage and evades you backwards, very usefull if you also have a Longbow as second weapon, so that you can Lightning Reflexes, swap to longbow, use longbow 4 (knockback) and use Longbow 2 right after that.
Another usefull stun Break is the Shout skill “Protect Me!”, this breaks you out of a stun , gives you protection and lets your pet taunt an enemy as soon as they hit you.

I myself still use Lightning Reflexes (also the better skill in WvW) because I like the evade backwards in combination with longbow as I described (you can also use a shortbow with the #3 skill for double backflips).

- The best Elite to use in Open World is “Strenght of the Pack!”

I hope that helped!
Just enjoy playing, don’t bother with min/maxing at this stage

I have a ranger, although it is not my main character. I am by no means a Ranger expert.

Having said that, I must say, that Ranger has one aspect that I didn’t realize could be such a great feature. It is a class that people underestimate constantly, especially in PvP/WvW. I have been in positions that I should have been absolutely murdered, but beacause people didn’t think I could cause them much damage, I not only survived (they ignored me) I made sure a few people never underestimated me again.

Right now I am using a LB for group play, and I switch between S/P and GS depending on the situation in solo play. I may not be doing it right, but I am having fun not doing it right.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

In my experience, this happens a lot less frequently than people think. Just because a build can possibly do 2-3x more damage on a large hitbox golem that is standing still while you have every raid buff possible, doesn’t mean it’s like that all the time.

Unless people are getting those rotations perfect, then the DPS is significantly lower, whereas with a Ranger S/A there is no rotation, you just AA and use your buffs off CD. I’ve out damaged power staff eles so many times it’s not even funny, because they can’t play it as well as those that post the benchmarks do in that particular video they practised for 5 hours to make perfectly.

Why would your rotation not be perfect if you take part in end-game and know all mechanics and rotations?
Also you need not only do rotations good as them, you also need to keep flanking (they dont need flanking at all).

What damage would you get with AA and buffs?

Skuzz.6580:

You can play ranger perfectly fine, the dps people keep talking about, and it being 2×3 times lower than other is just a load of b/s. rangers are within the 29-33k range on benchmarks, which cover 90% of specs.

This is a dps testing for Petless Ranger in preparation for Soulbeast
Marksmanship: Steady Aim, Predator
Skirmishing: Sharpened Edge, Spotter, Vicious
Beastmaster: Two Hand Training, Honed Axe
Gears: Full Berzerker
Ascended Weapon with Sigil of Fire and Sigil of Force
Ascended Trinkets
Exotic Armors with Rune of Scholar
Utility: Signet of Wild (Not bringing Sharpened Edge because rangers will most likely bring spirits)
This test is assumed I have all boons and all class exclusive buffs/ banners/ spirits/ glyph/ alacrity
This test uses 6% + 3% power utility and 100 power 70 precision food. (No ferocity)
All Golems have 25 stacks of Vulnerability and Cripple
The test is taking 5 dps numbers from Raid Golem and take the average of that number
GS: 14864
Sword Axe + GS: 17612
Sword Axe: 20254
Sword Axe + Axe Warhorn: 20298
Axe Warhorn: 15217
Axe Axe: 18355
Longbow (1000+ range + Predator): 16779
Longbow (1000+ range + LtW): 14911
Longbow (melee range + Predator): 14797
Sword Axe + LB (Quick Draw): 17206
Sword Axe + LB (Vicious Quarry): 19379

p.s. To get Soulbeast, you are losing pet dps and one of 3 trees, all of them contribute to shown dps.

Bratec.7136:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

In my experience, this happens a lot less frequently than people think. Just because a build can possibly do 2-3x more damage on a large hitbox golem that is standing still while you have every raid buff possible, doesn’t mean it’s like that all the time.

Unless people are getting those rotations perfect, then the DPS is significantly lower, whereas with a Ranger S/A there is no rotation, you just AA and use your buffs off CD. I’ve out damaged power staff eles so many times it’s not even funny, because they can’t play it as well as those that post the benchmarks do in that particular video they practised for 5 hours to make perfectly.

Why would your rotation not be perfect if you take part in end-game and know all mechanics and rotations?
Also you need not only do rotations good as them, you also need to keep flanking (they dont need flanking at all).

What damage would you get with AA and buffs?

Because people are not perfect, because people are lazy. I’ve never actually heard of anyone I know getting the same damage as the benchmark videos. If you think you can, please enlighten us.

Flanking is like the easiest thing in the world to do, it’s not difficult at all.

The only rotation for S/A ranger is using PoS/Sic Em/Frost Spirit off CD and AA.

Bratec.7136:

Skuzz.6580:

You can play ranger perfectly fine, the dps people keep talking about, and it being 2×3 times lower than other is just a load of b/s. rangers are within the 29-33k range on benchmarks, which cover 90% of specs.

This is a dps testing for Petless Ranger in preparation for Soulbeast
Marksmanship: Steady Aim, Predator
Skirmishing: Sharpened Edge, Spotter, Vicious
Beastmaster: Two Hand Training, Honed Axe
Gears: Full Berzerker
Ascended Weapon with Sigil of Fire and Sigil of Force
Ascended Trinkets
Exotic Armors with Rune of Scholar
Utility: Signet of Wild (Not bringing Sharpened Edge because rangers will most likely bring spirits)
This test is assumed I have all boons and all class exclusive buffs/ banners/ spirits/ glyph/ alacrity
This test uses 6% + 3% power utility and 100 power 70 precision food. (No ferocity)
All Golems have 25 stacks of Vulnerability and Cripple
The test is taking 5 dps numbers from Raid Golem and take the average of that number
GS: 14864
Sword Axe + GS: 17612
Sword Axe: 20254
Sword Axe + Axe Warhorn: 20298
Axe Warhorn: 15217
Axe Axe: 18355
Longbow (1000+ range + Predator): 16779
Longbow (1000+ range + LtW): 14911
Longbow (melee range + Predator): 14797
Sword Axe + LB (Quick Draw): 17206
Sword Axe + LB (Vicious Quarry): 19379

p.s. To get Soulbeast, you are losing pet dps and one of 3 trees, all of them contribute to shown dps.

Have you actually read my whole response?
Did I ever name Power Ranger being in the benchmarks for rangers?
And you did a DPS test for Power? the one type we all know is just nowhere near as good as our actual benchmark dps spec: Condi

Also in preparation for PoF here are a few things:
- In PoF Sic’ Em alone (in its current form) ups your dps by 15-20% (25% uptime of 40% = 10% flat but since you can time this with your burst dps skills the 10% goes up to 15 or even higher, and this is without counting alacrity).
- Being in Beastmode is actually a slight dps increase over using a pet by sheer stats alone, Beasts abilities further increase that.
- Also don’t forget the 17% damage increase you get from Soulbeast traits.

I still think a hybrid build will find its place in the benchmarks, can’t quite test that out since we don’t have access to it right now (new gear stats)

Core ranger condition builds are very competitive – all this talk of people not wanting rangers in raids is way, way in the past.

As others have mentioned, druids (ranger elite spec) is pretty much the go-to healer for endgame content. Druids combine ready access to heal/cleanse with great group dps buffs. Furthermore, those druid-specific damage buffs are not the standard boons, but are (as far as I remember) immune to boon-stripping.

A condi ranger/druid in full viper gear definitely puts out respectable dps. The power-based builds Bratec tested are a totally different matter, and have never been seen as competitive with other classes.