Guild Wars 2

Hey fellow Rangers,

Are there any good LB/SB builds out there? primarily zerker builds if lucky?

I’d strongly reccomend against going full ranged, since you cut yourself off from some of the perks of melee combat. Melee does more damage than ranged weapons in this game iirc, so a Longbow is never going to do as much damage as say, a sword or a greatsword. Moreover, you can’t share the love in a full range build – rangers have loads of awesome AoE’s that can benefit an entire party, and your party has alot of AoE’s that are going to be thrown around in melee range that can benefit you. If you’re at a range all the time, you’ll miss out on that, which can leave you a bit out-of-the-loop buff wise.

Another thing worth saying is that the Shortbow only reaches its full potential in a crit-based condition damage build, due to the easy poisons and bleeds it has. It’ll be difficult for you to make best use of both a Longbow and a Shortbow in the same set, since the Longbow makes almost no use of conditions.

That being said, I do have a soft spot for my Longbow – it offers high ranged damage, and some of the best kiting abilities in the game (AoE cripple, knockback, and an invis, ololololol). I just run full zerker with my Longbow, with Steady Focus from the Marksmanship tree to boost my damage when I’m at a range (Due to the aggro-reset you get from the stealth, you don’t need to dodge quite as much anyway). Piercing Arrows/Eagle Eye are sort of ‘meh’ skills. 5% damage on one of your weapons is alright, but with an investment in skirmishing, you could get a 10% bonus on all your weapons from behind, which would benefit your shortbow better anyway. You also won’t make huge use of the increased range, since 1200 range is already long enough to keep most enemies at bay, especially with all your kiting skills. Piercing arrows is really situational, and if you’re in a situation where you want to hit as many enemies as possible, the Axe beats the Longbow any day.

I did run a Shortbow for a while, and the best advice I can offer is just try to stay behind your target and make use of the Skirmishing trait line. Bleed on crit, more damage from behind, and Quick Draw are all brilliant skills for the Shortbow, with the latter skill benefitting your Longbow as well (Quick Draw is probably the only skill I’d take that specifically targets bows, since 20% cooldown reduction is pretty darn good)

Overall, the best build I’d say for SB/LB would be Rampagers. I can’t speak from experience here, but it gives you the condition damage for your Shortbow, the power for your Longbow, and the precision, which benefits both. It’s not ideal, but if you’re adamant about going full ranged, it’s probably one of the better armor sets available.

I go full zerker range and collect my lootbags in wvw

Many people say that full zerker stuff is the only PVE choice and from my experience I think it is right. However sb is mostly about conditions, so if you are not a sb fan, you may consider to use some melee weapon as a secondary.

If you trait Remorseless, the useless lb skill 3 becomes suddenly usefull as it gives you the Opening strike pretty often and with Quick draw you can spawn all lb skills almost without delay, like 1 1 3 1 / 5 2 and 4 where needed (in the seldom cases when you are accepted in a pug group make sure you don’t push the mob out of melee chars reach). Quickening zephyr can be very usefull when used with skills 5 and 2 – in this order because you can’t move during 5.