Guild Wars 2

I’m leveling a Ranger (level 44 now), and I wanted advice on how to get the most damage done. I am running full Power/Precision gear, and I have access to all utility skills (although I’m lazy and prefer signets, especially the one for run speed).

I am liking the longbow a lot better than I did at first. What I do when I first arrive in the area is equip a sword/dagger with bloodlust on each and get to 25 stacks. Then I swap those out for my Longbow of Force (+3%), and a Sword of Force and Dagger of Accuracy.

What I’m most curious about are the best traits to kill things the fastest.

Am I correct that at 20 Marksmanship (with Steady Focus and Eagle Eye), 25 Skirmishing (which gives another 10% damage when flanking), and 25 Wilderness (+ 10% when above 90% health), this would increase my Longbow damage potential by 35%? If so this seems pretty significant. Is this the best/optimal damage setup for a solo Ranger?

I know that melee technically puts out damage faster (or so I hear), but it seems I would more often lose the flanking and “above 90%” bonus if I did so. Is melee still better than longbow when you factor this in?

An alternative I was thinking about would combine Marksmanship with Beastmastery, which in theory could make a pet that does respectable damage on his own (I use Drakes and Felines primarily).

The two reasons I’m more hesitant to buff the pet now are: 1) The enemy is sometimes dead or close to dead from by bow before the pet even gets to it, and 2) Pet health (defense if you will) is about to be buffed next week anyway, which might free up those BM points for other things.

Please advise a new player/ranger on the best PVE setups you have found. Thanks for your help.

There is no reason to make any special build while leveling. Too many things change. On lvl 80 for best dps you should go sword/warhorn. In this game melee always deals more dmg than ranged (ok, mostly).
I’m LB fan myself, but if you want to use it in PvE, better find nice ppl to run with – from what I hear pugs can be problematic (never experienced it myself btw).

fourhim.3584:

I’m leveling a Ranger (level 44 now), and I wanted advice on how to get the most damage done. I am running full Power/Precision gear …

… equip a sword/dagger with bloodlust on each and get to 25 stacks. …

Am I correct that at 20 Marksmanship (with Steady Focus and Eagle Eye), 25 Skirmishing (which gives another 10% damage when flanking), and 25 Wilderness (+ 10% when above 90% health), …

Heh, that’s almost exactly what I do, and exactly my build. I use sword/x for melee when I need DPS. When I’m feeling lazy I’ll use greatsword instead, which is where the 20 WS trait to reduce cooldown on sword and greatsword really helps. I find it doesn’t make that big a difference with sword though.

For x, I find dagger’s skills to be rather redundant, and most of the time I’m playing on wifi so the skill evades are too late anyway. I use horn when I’m in a group for its group buff. When I’m farming solo, I’ll use torch so I can apply burning without having to take fire trap. Fire trap however is better against multiple mobs. 20 WS also gets you the reduced cooldown on offhand weapons, which is really nice with torch or horn.

Chopp’s build is similar with 25 points in Nature Magic instead of WS. It’s a less mobile build because it uses a stationary frost spirit (I don’t like characterizing the build as getting 7% more damage from frost spirit because any other build can use frost spirit and get 3.5% more damage). But the other bonuses in the tree really help your pet’s damage and survivability even with 0 BM. It’s worth trying if you want the pet to contribute more damage, without committing to a BM build.

But it’s less tanky and you can’t get the reduced cooldown on sword, GS, and offhand weapons. The 5% of vitality goes to power trait also forces you to emphasize vit instead of toughness. I prefer to focus on toughness for defense, using condition removal (instead of vit) to counter condition damage. I don’t PvP though so the situations I encounter are a lot more predictable.

Other options are to go full 30 in Marksmanship for the trait which lets signets affect you. I really dislike how activated signets affect all other classes, but rangers have to take a grandmaster trait for it. But it’s partly countered by some of the signet active effects being really nice. Wild = 8 sec stability and 25% extra damage, Stone = 6 sec invulnerability.

30 Skirmishing is nice if you’re throwing traps. If you’re an asura, there’s a nice Moment of Clarity build which focuses on stun and daze duration.

I know that melee technically puts out damage faster (or so I hear),

It does. With the sword autoattack, by about 50%-70% more against single targets. Against multiple targets, the sword (and greatsword for that matter) demolishes the longbow.

but it seems I would more often lose the flanking and “above 90%” bonus if I did so. Is melee still better than longbow when you factor this in?

Those bonuses come nowhere near counteracting the DPS difference of sword vs longbow. The only bow which comes close to sword DPS is flanking shortbow with a condition build.

An alternative I was thinking about would combine Marksmanship with Beastmastery, which in theory could make a pet that does respectable damage on his own (I use Drakes and Felines primarily).

Beastmastery… I ran a BM build for about a few weeks. Here’s the problem. The pet controls in this game stink. With a BM build, you are putting a large fraction of your damage, if not the majority of your damage, in the hands of the computer AI. And thus you’re giving up a lot of control.

If you’re the type of player who just wants a slow, relaxing game, this will probably suit you just fine. I’m the type of player who loves to optimize. Not necessarily min-max – I’ve challenge myself before by doing things like fighting without armor. But for a given situation, build, and equipment, I like to try to figure out what combination or pattern of commands results in the best outcome. That doesn’t really work with a BM build because a large part of your damage (and other things like blast finisher, knockdowns, pet damage spikes) is out of your control.

With a non-BM power build, I fell more like I’m in control of my destiny. I can use the pet to augment my play, but if the pet AI fails and the pet dies because despite repeated F3+F1s it’s too stupid to stand anywhere but in that fire field, it’s just a minor inconvenience rather than a game-crippling event. I still have the tools to deal with the situation sans pet.