PvE Meta build?
Full Zerker. That hasn’t changed.
Red moa for fury. Jungle stalker for might.
Sword+WH/SB
Trait accordingly. 30/30/5/5/0 and associated damage increasing traits…
Or just reroll a warrior and guardian for ‘em. In the long run you’ll be better off.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
I would suggest going 15 in nature magic for vigorous spirits, meaning you would end up with 30/25/0/15/0 or 25/30/0/15/0. Pets are something you should switch around according to situation and for the most part you want to try and have sword mh in both of your weapon sets.
Vigorous spirts? Mmmm… IMO, no. Not worth losing the 5pt in power alone.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
well people got the traits about right here’s the weps for you
Main set:
sword/warhorn
other set
sword/axe-when you need reflects or to stack vul
GS when you need to stand at max melee range, or suck with sword, or meleeing lupi (3 can save your life as well as 4)
LB when melee isn’t an option
utilities
sick’em-more pet DPS
frost spirit-can be traded to something else on bosses where it dies right away (like lighting reflexes for lupi soloing)
quickening Zypher
The Sickest Guild NA
Thank you for the help!
What traits would you recommend? The ones I think seem most usefull is:
I, VII, XII
I, V, XII
No room for going range ey?
And about the rerolling, I have the other classes too, this is just for a change of pace really (slower pace :P )
Vigorous spirts? Mmmm… IMO, no. Not worth losing the 5pt in power alone.
Vigorous spirits doubles the amount of procs from frost spirit meaning traiting it is a 3,5% party wide damage increase when spirit is alive. Spotter is the only trait more important than vigorous spirits.
30 25 0 15 0 is the DPS build.
20 25 0 25 0 is another DPS alternative.
30 0 25 15 0 for OH training if you are lacking a reflector class so you can take OH training and cover that role, usually in high lvl fractals
Frost spirit is definitely expected of you. Well, nothing is expected of you in a PUG, but not running FS will make you as popular as a cleric’s guardian.
20 25 0 25 0 is another DPS alternative. This is the best. Most options, best dps.
30/25/0/15/0 is not rly well. Bad vulstacking or more stability (for skipping Arah P2 for example) are the only benefits.
All other builds are much weaker imo.
BTW: A ~600 heal per second + permaprot clerics guardian can make my runs abit easier. A ranger without spotter/spirit can make it only slower. So i would prefer the cleric´s guardian…
Frost spirit is definitely expected of you. Well, nothing is expected of you in a PUG, but not running FS will make you as popular as a cleric’s guardian.
And for those of you wondering how to move your spirit when you party moves, you can manually kill it by swapping the FS skill once you’re out of combat. Pick something with a short cooldown like Flame Trap or Guard. You have to click the little arrow above the skill to change it, and it’s not uncommon to accidentally fire the skill instead. You don’t want to be waiting for a 60 sec cooldown if this happens.
When you switch the skill the spirit dies. If you switch back to FS, the skill will be on a 20 sec cooldown. So by the time you get to your new location, FS should be ready to place again.
So to summarize, the absolute minimum to be a decent ranger is 20/0/0/10/0 with spotter and vigorous spirits, and a sword.
If you pug with your ranger (like I do) and you can’t rely on your teammates to cleanse your condis, you might be tempted with this: 20/0/30/20/0 so you can pick up EB. It’s a bit less damage than those listed above, but you can still melee, provide all the manditory team support you can, and you’re going to be a useful addition to your team. Unlike bearbow. Which is terrible.
Sword does the most DPS by far, so it’s sort of the go-to.
The other problem is that the Shortbow’s DPS is garbage, and Longbow’s DPS, while decent, requires you to be at max range to get the most of it. Being at max range means missing out on 20+ might stacks from your team, which is where a huge chunk of extra damage goes missing.
Melee weapons put you right on top of the might stacking, which is why they’re favored.
So to summarize, the absolute minimum to be a decent ranger is 20/0/0/10/0 with spotter and vigorous spirits, and a sword.
Well, 20/25/0/25 tries to hit most of the major damage boost traits.
- 20 Marksmanship for Spotter
- 10 Marksmanship gives you 10% more damage when at full endurance.
- 25 Skirmishing gives you 10% more damage when flanking,
- 25 WS gives you 10% more damage when above 90% hp.
- 25 NM gives you 5% more damage when you have a boon.
- 10 NM adds 7% of your vit to power
That’s 95 trait points, and you only get 70. The WS line doesn’t otherwise increase direct damage, so it usually gets dropped.
While only 10 NM is needed for Vigorous Spirits, 15 NM gives your pet a copy of all your buffs. That is huge (for the pet). So most people add the extra 5 points instead of just 10 NM.
20 NM lets you pick up both Vigorous Spirits and Strength of Spirit (7% of your vit is added to power). So it’s easy to talk yourself into adding another 5 points to NM. With last month’s patch, it also gives you the option to unbind the spirits so they can follow you.
And if you’ve come this far, another 5 points in NM gets you 5% extra damage when you have a boon. Congratulations you’ve talked yourself up to 25 NM.
If you pug with your ranger (like I do) and you can’t rely on your teammates to cleanse your condis, you might be tempted with this: 20/0/30/20/0 so you can pick up EB. It’s a bit less damage than those listed above, but you can still melee, provide all the manditory team support you can, and you’re going to be a useful addition to your team. Unlike bearbow. Which is terrible.
There are all sorts of variants of that you can use. I’ve also seen 20/20/30/0/0. I used 20/20/15/15/0 for a while too after dying too much in PUG runs where the others just couldn’t kill the bosses quickly enough. The protect on dodge and extra toughness really helps, without giving up too much damage.
Note that 20 WS lets you pick up off-hand training. That’ll let you fire Warhorn 5 every 28 sec instead of 35. The additional fury your party gets helps offset the decreased damage from reducing Skirmishing or NM. And you can swap it for Martial Mastery when using a GS (Maul and Swoop get very spammy). If we had 75 trait points instead of 70, I’d probably run 20/20/20/15 for almost everything.
While Empathic Bond is pretty much required in PvP, Bark Skin (30 WS) is a solid trait in PvE. It effectively gives you about 25% more hp. If you dodge for protection while it’s up, it ends up more than doubling your effective hp. I need to test, but I get the impression the damage reduction kicks in even on a single hit. i.e., if you’re at full health and get hit for 95% of your hp, you take full damage for the first 75%. But the remaining 20% gets cut in half to 10%. I have nothing solid to back this up, it’s just the impression I get where a lot of big boss hits I see insta-downing others instead reduce me to about 5%-10% hp when I run with Bark Skin.
Okey I will try 20/25/0/25/0 now. If an encounter requires me to go ranged (either by how the encounter works or due to my skill), which ranged option should I then pick? LB, SB or Axe?
Okey I will try 20/25/0/25/0 now. If an encounter requires me to go ranged (either by how the encounter works or due to my skill), which ranged option should I then pick? LB, SB or Axe?
I take all 3 with me at all times. They each have their uses, particularly axes (TA for “axemple”.) Often times if it’s a haphazard PUG with no pulling, I’ll start encounters with barrage, then you get fury when you move in to melee.
I also use the 20/25/0/25/0.
20 in Marksmanship for Steady Focus and Spotter.
25 in Skirmishing for stats and Hunter’s tactics
25 in Nature Magic for Vigourous Spirits and Bountiful Hunter.
Two things that i still struggle to decide are
1) Strength of Spirit vs Spirit Unbound. Obviously Strength will give me more theorical DPS, but Spirit Unbound allow you to always have your spirit with you and don’t have to kill you spirit and recast them just before another fight. This way my spirit are ready before the fight and i can started attacking right away. Since i have Frost and Sun spirit with me that same me a lot of time and i can focus on the combat more. Also this make the Water Spirit seem less bad. I’m not sure yet, i’m only testing it right now, but it can heal quite a lot someone using FGS and i don’t have to waste time using a healing skill in the middle of the combat.
2) I never know what to use as my adept and master trait in the skirmish line. I usually go with trait I and II. But depending on our party we usually have plenty bleeding already, while the pets attack are not that great to begin with. Would be nice to have 2 good trait to take there and not only filler in order to gain the stats and 2 minor trait.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
I also use the 20/25/0/25/0.
20 in Marksmanship for Steady Focus and Spotter.
25 in Skirmishing for stats and Hunter’s tactics
25 in Nature Magic for Vigourous Spirits and Bountiful Hunter.Two things that i still struggle to decide are
1) Strength of Spirit vs Spirit Unbound. Obviously Strength will give me more theorical DPS, but Spirit Unbound allow you to always have your spirit with you and don’t have to kill you spirit and recast them just before another fight. This way my spirit are ready before the fight and i can started attacking right away. Since i have Frost and Sun spirit with me that same me a lot of time and i can focus on the combat more. Also this make the Water Spirit seem less bad. I’m not sure yet, i’m only testing it right now, but it can heal quite a lot someone using FGS and i don’t have to waste time using a healing skill in the middle of the combat.
2) I never know what to use as my adept and master trait in the skirmish line. I usually go with trait I and II. But depending on our party we usually have plenty bleeding already, while the pets attack are not that great to begin with. Would be nice to have 2 good trait to take there and not only filler in order to gain the stats and 2 minor trait.
Water spirit has an ICD, so you were prolly looking at a thief heal himself with Signet of Malice and Fiery Rush. Water spirit is like ~87 hps. Only use i’ve found for it is fractal PUGS where everyone is spread out ranging a boss like arch diviner. Even then, I feel healing spring is better.
(edited by TurtleDragon.3108)