Guild Wars 2

I’m wondering what the best Ranger build is for 1 v 1 fights while roaming in WVW. I am thinking that it would do well to keep the opponent afflicted with movement impeding conditions while it bursts with the Longbow, thus capitalizing on my survivability and Predator’s Onslaught?

My current build is Rampagers with Traps and Runes of the Trapper. (I find traps fun in WVW.) I either do 6/6/2/0/0 or 2/6/6/0/0.

We have lots of ways to apply chilled, crippled and immobilized. Has anyone found the best combination?

I could run Frost Trap, Spike Trap, and Muddy Terrain, giving me 3 means right there. LB 5 applies it as well. Entangle applies Crippled.

Runes of Grenth and Rune of the Ice apply Chilled and increase its duration. Should I also try Superior Sigil of Ice and Ghost Pepper Poppers (at night)?

Finally, what Pets are best for an Onslaught build? It’s looking like the Owl (Chilling Slash + Swiftness for me) and Krytan Drakehound (Intim Howl) might be best.

Thanks for your help.

Basic idea is you need to not go full glass. Try to layer your defenses so that if one thing fails you have several back up plans. You can check out my build in the ongoing king/queen of the hill thread (first NA king post.) It’s fairly similar to what I roamed with for over a year. Dog immobilize + muddy terrain will honestly kill like 80% of players who aren’t used to a not-full-GC ranger.

The player that beat me was actually using a LB build as well.

Edit: Eh, I have some time, I’ll expand. You won’t hit much of anything at range without read the wind, but you can probably work with PO if you were picturing this as a more close range fighter. I didn’t have RTW (it didn’t exist) for most of the time I was roaming with LB, so my goal was to knock off half their health if I didn’t outright kill them, then they close the gap and I slowly whittle them down with s/d, entangle, and occasionally swapping to LB for the #3 and #4. LB is a really cool melee range weapon.

I do have a sigil of ice on my LB just to add one more annoyance to getting towards me, but if I still used it much I would put sigil of generosity on it. IMO drakehound and wolf are the way to go, although I see the benefit of the spider. Drakehound needs to be used more actively, and spider is very much fire and forget. If you start your fight by sending in the drakehound from outside even LB range, you can really catch people off guard with a KD or howl. Play it by ear, if they’re paying attention they may dodge one or even both, in which case you can probably light them up with a MT and RF.

Also don’t forget if someone isn’t getting out of an immobilze, get behind them so they can’t attack you. For example, necros are weak at immobilize, but if you snare them and then stand in front of them you will melt in seconds. Stand behind them and they can’t do anything.

Personally I like the SotF setup, so thats 6/0/2/6/0.

I do go full zerk gear just because it’s more fun.. So that’s this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJATRjEqUwaJLusQ1ag9gadAUAndrhw9WcwtdBnqA-TRBPwAJ2fAkyPAq/EUXwLlgkCIilRA-e

If I was going for a serious duel (which is never, but if I was) I’d probably swap half my gear for knights and replace SoH with SoS… but for roaming, I like the movement speed and the ability to rek someone instantly, so that requires sacrificing defence.

Generally though… I wouldnt say there’s a “best” setup… all the variations have pros and cons and some setups will work better vs some opponents. For example your idea of stacking soft CC is great, but will be 100% wasted effort against a S/D thief. They don’t even notice soft CC it rolls off so fast.. so a build which is heavily invested in using it will suffer in that matchup, but might work really really well against a melee ranger who tend to struggle with soft CC.