Guild Wars 2

A few tips on how to be effective on your ranger in PvE.

Equipment Stats:

Berserker (power, precision, ferosity) on all your equipment. I’ve been playing over 2 years on my ranger, have done most content, and haven’t needed anything else. Rely on your active defenses (evades, blocks, ect) and your allies abilities (wall of reflection and such) for defense, not equipment stats. Having that extra offense is overall more helpful than the extra health or armor would have been.

Weapons:

• Longbow is your best ranged weapon.
• Greatsword is your best cleave weapon with defensive aspects that really help at more difficult content.
• Sword/axe is your highest DPS weapon. It also has a projectile reflect.
• Sword/warhorn is a high DPS weapon with group support.

What I like to do is use sword/axe sword/warhorn in easy content. In harder content longbow and greatsword are better options because the sword with its “leap of death” as I like to call it, puts you in the enemies face and makes it harder to maneuver.

• Mainhand axe should only be used when doing mindless zerg farming.
• Forget about torch, conditions are too weak.
• Forget about the dagger, if you need defense use the greatsword, otherwise stick with offhand warhorn or axe.
• Shortbow isn’t as good as the longbow.

In Group Settings:

Bring Frost Spirit with the Vigorous Spirits trait and the Spotter trait. Together, while active, these two will give a total of 35% damage and 750 precision to the group, far surpassing any alternatives.

Pets:

Please don’t use bears! What you should be using are:

• One feline. Jaguar has a nice stealth ability and the Jungle Stalker grants 5 stacks of might. Which one is better depends on the situation.
• One drake. It’s tough and has cleave attacks making it the best pet against groups of enemies. I personally like Reef Drake the most because of its confusion which never seems to hit the condition cap so it’s always useful.

Together these two should allow you to get through most situations. The drake works best against groups of enemies, places where the feline can’t survive well, and is good at surviving while you wait for pet swap to come back. The feline is best for its single target damage.

In the rare situation where these two can’t survive well, such as the final boss in SE path 1, switching out one of both of these for a ranged pet (spider or devourer) is a better choice.

As a beginner ranger, as in lvl 1, is it good to start with bear since it is a good tank? Or better to start with wolf / dog / feline?

Rotasu.9782:

As a beginner ranger, as in lvl 1, is it good to start with bear since it is a good tank? Or better to start with wolf / dog / feline?

River Drake is fantastic throughout, and can be picked up early on. Don’t leave home without Buttercup! (My river drake) Dogs are wonderful as well. I like arcdotus bear in certain situations so you might as well learn to use it.

Despite popular belief, I suspect bears are for when you are using melle. They seem to fight nice right next to you and can land hits reliably like this. That being said I really think Drakes are mostly superior for a meele ally. The blast finisher is really nice and they hit very hard.

Rotasu.9782:

As a beginner ranger, as in lvl 1, is it good to start with bear since it is a good tank? Or better to start with wolf / dog / feline?

Felines* with maybe river drake on swap for PvE 99.99999999% of the time. There really is no need for pet tanking.

*Or birds if you want to run places faster.

Fluffball.8307:

Rotasu.9782:

As a beginner ranger, as in lvl 1, is it good to start with bear since it is a good tank? Or better to start with wolf / dog / feline?

Felines* with maybe river drake on swap for PvE 99.99999999% of the time. There really is no need for pet tanking.

*Or birds if you want to run places faster.

There is the need for pet tanking in many situations. Old Tom. Mossman. Crusher. Mai Trin. and much more