Guild Wars 2

hi

im currently a lvl 63 ranger searching where to go with his trait points and build. I’m trying to find a good pve build which is also useful for me and the rest of the party in dungeons. I want to do good dmg (could also be in form of condi), but survivability is still very important for me (in form of protection/dodge/vit or tough, etc.).

1. What build would you suggest is better (only looking at the offensive side): condi+pre, Condi + power, Power + crit/pre, and which weapons?

2. Which stats are important on armor? Which should i go for?

3. traitpoints distribution for 1. and 2.? (and can someone maybe tell me what exactly “Moment of clairity” does?)

4. is a bear + the condition removal signet enough for conditional removal overall?

5. In dungeons i always see that my pets are going down really fast (bear). Should i try to be less reliant on pets or try to somehow boost them?

6. Are spirits useful in dungeons? They only buff allies, not myself, right?

7. Are there any builds/trait points distribution for Ranger which everyone agrees that it works really well? (Like with guardian there is a hammer/altruistic healing build or a paladin build, where most people agree that it’s good.) I saw some builds on different sites, but most of them are questionable and i don’t really know if they would really work.

thx very much.

1. condi + power is pretty good (especially since you can’t apply condi in all situations). Precision is ok for the bleed trait off crit, but it’s a very small chance off each crit and the bleed itself is quite weak that is applied. You can also go power + prec. For the condi combo, I’d recommend shortbow + axe/torch and for the power I would recommend longbow + axe/warhorn.

2. Depending on your build, power/condi/toughness are great for dungeons – precision is great too – Vitality and healing are rather useless.

3. I’m at work, so putting out a build right now is tough. Not sure on Moment of Clairty, I had the same question and never tested it out!

4. Yes, for about 90% of the encounters, plus your bear will aoe condi removal, so if you see allies in trouble, you can also help them with condi removal.

5. I wouldn’t worry about boosting them (least not until Anet releases the “soon” Ranger Buff patch). However, in PvE I run double bears to get the most out of their tankyness.

6. Spirits completely suck at the moment short of the elite utility spirit. He can actually be pretty decent, but I still run with entangle as it can be nice when you have to kite/kill a ton of mobs.

7. Right now there are a lot of variations based on what you want to do. I always put at least 5 into beast mastery for every build as switching pets is something every build will do and 2 seconds of quickness is awesome. From there I play condi, so I will usually put 25-30 into tough/condi and the rest into part of skirmishing (good traits) and power.

Things are kind of wait and see at the moment.

There’s a lack of build diversity overall…which just ends up meaning the community at large doesn’t have much build advice to hand you, because we tend to think only a small selection of options are useful right now (if that). Whether or not that’s true in an objective sense is neither here nor there, truthfully almost anything is at the very least functional. It’s just communally we’re not doing much in the way of picking favorites because we’re either waiting with baited breath for the next balance update to change our opinions on these things, or collectively alternating between posts of wishful thinking and posts of disgruntled fanboy cynacism to keep from vibrating in place.

5 I can tackle, though, as it’s not entirely a build question.
You shouldn’t be less reliant on your pet. It’s your profession mechanic and nothing can be gained from ignoring it. What you should be less reliant on is your pet tanking mobs for you as it does in open world PvE; handling multiple mobs easily without much investment in traits and utilities. If you don’t feel like making that investment (and it sounds like you’re not interested in a beastmaster build), you just should be focusing more on constantly swapping pets and using their cooldowns. This is harder on pets like bear, admittedly, because his family skills are all about tanking and you don’t feel like you’ve accomplished much by using swap to reset those. But there are other pets that have more generically useful family skills, and alot of pets can even use family skills back to back so you don’t have to force yourself to keep them in a dangerous situation just to ensure you’ve squeezed all the utility you can out of them.

ok, thx very much for the info, it really helped me alot.

I’m now going for Condi/power (not condi/prec, i have something like 8-10% crit chance)

my build and skills are now like this:
(link didnt work, sry)
20/0/30/5/5 with traits like: I,VIII / – / VI,VIII,XI / – / – with 10 unspent traitpoints
Skills: sharpening stone, Zephyr, lightning reflexes/Entangled

I’m more or less happy with my build. I will probably spend my last 10 points on Beastmastery, so i can save my pet more often and get more quickness, which i also get from Zephyr, with 20% cd reduction. So i can get high bleeds on a target really fast.

I have seen many other condition builds on the forum which are trap reliant and are going for Condi/pre. Are traps/prec/critdmg really worth the -quickness/ -survivability/ -pet health/ -condiremoval/ -a stun breaker? I mean the Trait “Trap Potency” gives 20% cd reduction (which is good) and twice as long trap conditions, which doesn’t make a difference, as all condition duration (execpt poison) have a duration of something like <2 sec. Not the trap duration gets improved, only the condi duration. That doesnt mean 2*trap-condi-dmg at all. Maybe just 1 or 2 ticks more per trap.

And i also don’t get why people are amazed by the trait “sharpened edges”. If you have a crit chance of lets say 50% and with a chance of 33% you will inflict bleed, that means that you get 1 bleed with a chance of 0.5*0.33=0.165%, which is pretty small.

If in doubt, 30 points in Beastmaster. Makes the pet tough as nails and makes your healing really powerful (you can do about 50% of your health with Heal As One). More importantly you’re no longer stuck with only bears for a dungeon; you’ll have to keep half an eye on them for when they get in trouble (hello graveling scavenger kd-lock-pounce-attack) but overall, they’ll be very useful.

15 points in beastmaster is very standard for PvE/Dungeons, 15 seconds pet swap is godly. The rest is up to you, i’m not a fan of condition builds as they do less DPS than power/crit builds, and when leveling/doing dungeons hitting from behind or the sides takes longer than killing the mob itself with a power/crit build.

your math is a bit off: 50% x 33% = 16.5% not .165%

Akiko.2364:

your math is a bit off: 50% x 33% = 16.5% not .165%

ah yeah, sry that’s what i meant, my bad. still, It’s like every 6th shot will get you bleed, which is nothing much.

I maybe have to also point out that my build mainly gives bleed. While this is cool an all, it’s not so good, when there are 2 or more other condition guys on the team in a dungeon as the cap is 25. With traps you at least also get fire and poison