Because I’m either masochistic or defiant, I’ve decided to finally roll a ranger. So, I figured what I would do is wear full dire gear, and use a shortbow with a bear. The Dire gear makes sure I won’t die while doing OP condi damage, and the bear can take a lot of hits without dying. The bear distracts the enemy, and then I go pew pew from behind and stack, like, 25 bleeds really fast…
I can’t keep a straight face while writing that. But seriously, there are several things about ranger that I just don’t know/haven’t really seen explained anywhere.
My current plans are as follows: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJARTjMqQJL2qCOsAXLG2Dq92DgRnH4Au3/O4Ie6LeKpJ-TBSBwAUuEAP3fooyvIKBvp+DKdBIM/B4JAAA-e
The general strategy is to use the longbow to open the fight, first pulling with rapid fire and then ending with barrage on my location once they’ve come close enough. Then I swap to greatsword and use that for the remainder of the fight. I’ll constantly be swapping pets to make use of Clarion Bond and Zephyr’s Speed.
Or at least that’s the theory, anyway. Several questions:
#1: Why cats? I know the Jungle stalker has a sweet activation, but my rough napkin math says they don’t do particularly more damage than something like birds.
#2: Will the pet swapping strategy even work, or will my pet be dead way too often to actually make use of Clarion and Zephyr?
#3: Is Predator’ Onslaught even worth it? With barrage I’ll have about 10 seconds of cripple, but after that I’m just hoping that additional party members will be using cripple and chill. The other option is to combine remorseless with two-hand fury, which will give me random spurts of 25% damage increase + vulnerability stacking. But of the Clarion Zephyr Strat doesn’t work I can just go with Predator’s instinct… many variables here.
#4: I can go into a totally different direction with this, and use sword/warhorn with flame trap so I can double blast might and have higher single target damage. However, I am hesitant to use sword, what with it’s animation locking, lack of cleave on second AA, and more difficult evasion skills. Is everyone expecting rangers to be might blasters, or should I leave the fire fields to engi/guard/ele?
I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.