Guild Wars 2

LATEST UPDATED EDITION OF BUILD:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQJATRjEVR2VWWVs2Bg1j967POjEZ0fo0LWiMJ-jQyAo+ARQgINAJviox2GKiGraBTVuoalLg3gRrWKgIWAA-e

So I made a previous thread about a ranger DPS PvE build that I saw, but that was July 23rd pre-patch. There are some very exciting changes to the ranger longbow that got me inspired to finish leveling my Ranger, and this is the build I am shooting for.

First, for comparison’s sake, this is my full zerker warrior’s build, of the more or less standard 30/25/0/0/15 “dungeon speed runs” variety.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNAR3ZjgOJvZPOPMxBCzjhAk/fZQFmoPMHA-jQyAYLioZCCAbIyJviox2GKiGraBTVuoalLg3gRrGA-e

Disclaimer: Above build has no food buffs included, andI’m poor but this is the best equipment I can afford especially since I have almost 4 level 80s, not counting this new Ranger! So only ascended piece is the amulet, rest all exotic, only ruby orbs no scholar. Shows 25 stacks from sigil of bloodlust.

Salient points: My warrior has 3699 attk on GS, 53% crit chance 89% crit damage. On axe/mace, damage 3688, 55% crit, 94% crit damage has about 2100 armor and 18k health.

Here’s my comparable (I hope) Ranger build (this was the original, which I have altered in the updated link above):
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQJATRjEVR2VWWVs2Bg1j967POjEZ0fo0LWiMJ-jQyAYrARQgINAJviox2GKiGraBTVuoalLg3gRrGA-e

Salient points: My ranger will have 3679 attk, 53% crit, 99% crit damage on LB, on GS I’ll have 3699 base attack and the rest the same. 1980 armor 16.5 HP.

Thus I conclude:
The build I have above will have similar (actually slightly more!) single target DPS than my warr. It will have significantly less HP and armor, but it does provide the pet mechanic to tank a bit of the damage for me.

Idea of this build, why longbow and GS?
Outside of the fact that both these weapons got changed (I’d argue, buffed) in the last patch?
1. Stack the hell out of vulnerability on target. Opening strike from me is 5 stacks of vuln, alpha training from my pet applies 5 more stacks. Rapid fire shoots 10x, 10 total stacks of vulnarability, so single targets start off with essentially 15 stacks of vuln from the beginning.

2. With the recent update as far as I understand it, Hunter’s shot gives you stealth, which reapplies opening strike once you get off of stealth! This means with the longbow recharge trait, hunter’s shot is at a 9.5s recharge, rapid fire on 8, meaning in ~10s you can reapply 15 stacks of vuln! In addition, rapid fire does a metric ton of damage to begin with. I included a sigil of frailty to have an additional 30% chance to inflict vuln on crit.

3. Have frost spirit increase damage output, in addition flank the target (or just make sure you’re not hitting target from the front, that’s enough to trigger the bonus) and then go to town!

As soon as I get home I’m going to test this out but I haven’t been this excited about my ranger since forever! What do you guys thing, is my theorycrafting sound or filled with holes?

Feedback from a WvW perspective
This will pump out a lot of damage but you will need to play smartly. You have little room for error with so little toughness and health. Not saying that is bad, it comes with Zerk territory. Just know where your enemy is, watch out for reflects, use GS to defend yourself but only enough to get out of trouble. I’d keep a warhorn handy also so you can #5 just before entering battle to buff up, then swap to GS.

PvE perspective – Know your fights, save your dodges. Again you have little room for error with so little toughness and health. Wisely place the spirit and use LB at max range as much as possible.

Enjoy shredding things up!

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQJATRjEVR2VWWVs2Bg1j967vWBOZPMkxEvYJykA-jQyAo+ARECUyvIasVtioxqWwUlLqW5CYwB8GMa1CBMaMA-e

this is how i would alter it… Its not easy to notice, but you actually get more critical damage from celestial armor then zerker. Albeit it doesnt give you as much raw damage. This slightly increased critical damage, ok you hit for a whopping 17% more doing this way counting in the food i added. along with toughness, healing and vitality makes you slightly more able to sustain yourself. It is not much, but it is better then nothing.

@ Expiatus, you’re absolutely right I need to be the king of evades and keep my head on a swivel since this build is arguably more squishy than my thief, but hopefully the fact that I’m pew pewing away from long range gives me a little more time to react.

@ Prysin, thanks for your edit! I have a few issues with it, starting with divinity runes are expensiveeeeeee!!! I do like the increased vitality and general survivability of celestial gear though, I compared your build to mine (by adding in the same foods in mine, and changing superior sigil of accuracy with bloodlust and upping it to 25 stacks for a fairer comparison), the results are the following:
Your build: 17.8k vitality, 2359 armor, 3479 attack, 53% crit, 118% crit damage.
My build: 16.58k vitality, 1980 armor, 3779 attack. 58% crit, 109% crit damage.

Now if I replace my zerker longbow and GS with celestial weapons… things become:
Mine + celestial: 17.37k vit, 2059 armor, 3669 attack, 56% crit, 110% crit damage

I’d call that a significant improvement over my old build, thank you! I’m dropping the idea of testing out divinity (or scholar) runes for now because there is no way i can afford ~70 gold in the near future.

I’m hesitant to add 10 into wilderness though, because a lot of the damage output comes from frost spirit which needs to be traited in order to get maximum benefits, also I’m not a fan of the grandmaster traits of 30 into skirmishing, so I’m sticking with 30/25/0/15/0 for the time being.

Regardless, thanks for all the feedback everyone it is really helping! Keep ’em coming!

frost spirit needs to move with you, or else it is worthless sadly. Meaning that you have to confine yourself to a 900 range area, which is small for a LB user. Potentially lowering your damage potential.

So went to the mist to test this build, unfortunately it doesn’t have all the pve toys that I wanted to play with but in terms of damage output (used scholar stats) i got my stats to:

Attk 3384
47% crit
53% crit damage (pathetic I know)

On heavy armor golem:
Went longbow 2 skill, waited for 10 hits, hit LB skill 3, LB skill 1, and the compiled damage resulted to:

9,885 damage, 20 stacks of vuln.

Trial 2: Same as above, but this time activating frost spirit and rampage as one, this raised my crit chance to 67% and the result:
11,798 damage, 22 stacks of vuln (I guess my sigil of frailty kicked in more this time).

Based on primarily result I have to say this looks promising! If there is a way I can test the result of having 3669 attk, 56% crit and 110% crit damage to test the true dps of this build, someone please let me know!

Regarding frost spirit, I’m treating it like the warrior’s banner. It has a recharge cooldown of 60s so plenty of time to recast at a new location when necessary. When you’re in a boss fight in which the boss doesn’t move all over the place, it’s viable I think.

In general PvE trash mobs, the extra oomph from frost spirit isn’t necessary most likely.

Silver.4798:

So went to the mist to test this build, unfortunately it doesn’t have all the pve toys that I wanted to play with but in terms of damage output (used scholar stats) i got my stats to:

Attk 3384
47% crit
53% crit damage (pathetic I know)

On heavy armor golem:
Went longbow 2 skill, waited for 10 hits, hit LB skill 3, LB skill 1, and the compiled damage resulted to:

9,885 damage, 20 stacks of vuln.

Trial 2: Same as above, but this time activating frost spirit and rampage as one, this raised my crit chance to 67% and the result:
11,798 damage, 22 stacks of vuln (I guess my sigil of frailty kicked in more this time).

Based on primarily result I have to say this looks promising! If there is a way I can test the result of having 3669 attk, 56% crit and 110% crit damage to test the true dps of this build, someone please let me know!

go to WvW borderland. Outside citadel, to the right. There is some moa’s. Sure we dont know their toughness and HP with 100% accuracy. But a moa is a moa. And it can be tested in safety.

I don’t have the gear to do that in wvw yet but I’ll have them within 2 weeks (friggin ranger I have is only at lvl 31 currently… but I have the mats and tokens for the gear at least).

I can of course take the lazy option, and estimate that since my test was run at 53% crit damage (where my original build is at 110%) and my base attack is 300 points lower in PvP than in my estimated PvE gear, I should expect my damage output to be more than twice what I got. So about 25k sound fair? Rapid fire —> Hunter’s shot —> Long range shot takes about 6 seconds to complete, that’s at least 4k DPS.

That is NOT bad at all! (Assuming I didn’t screw up my math somewhere)