Guild Wars 2

Hi guys,

Planning to level up my ranger. I hate getting into melee range so please limit suggestions to either utility/longbow/shortbow/traits only. Can someone inform/teach me how rangers AoE for tagging in DE’s? A lot of threads in other sections of the forum indicate that rangers have high burst AoE but so far I’m just seeing one AoE for longbow so not sure how this is happening.

Thanks!

Sword and greatsword’s 1 skill both deal damage to multiple foes, axe 1 skill ricochet between foes, torch has bonfire, and the underwater weapons both have an AoE skills as well.

Axes for one, if you’re not worried about collateral damage/aggro ricocheting axes around will tag most things in DE hordes. using dual axes is really your best bet for hitting lots of things simultaneously at range.

Both bows only have one AoE attack each so until you get the Piercing Arrows trait you’ll only ever be able to hit more than one foe at a time with a bow with that specific attack.

Really though the best way to do massive AoE damage is to go melee and use traps.

Yes Piercing Arrows is what you want. It turns all your attacks into straight line (small cone) AE. Coupled with Quickening Zephyr and it’s very good burst but not wide area. Barrage is the big area effect skill. 30 Second cooldown, 24 seconds with Quick Draw trait in Skirmishing.

Axe/axe in de’s will pretty much tag everything pretty quickly. If you want to be lazy about it, you can sit there and just use the primary attack the entire time, switching manually between targets can let you tag over 20 mobs within a few seconds.

Flame trap+spike trap with “trap potency” and “trappers expertise” traits – is best ranger aoe (I compared a very long time ;P ). To improve effect use melee weapon or axe.

Condition based trap builds with Flame Trap/Spike Trap, etc. and the traits that decrease trap cooldowns and let you cast traps from range is by far the strongest AoE spec available to the class, ranged or otherwise.

Traps at lower lvls with short-bow or axe. Drop traps where enemy mobs spawn / arrive for event and shoot the rest, but axe ricochet is better. Btw axe MH is a mediumish ranged weapons so you don’t need to be in melee to use it. But once you get use traps at range and increased range then that is good ae damage.

If you want range and AoE, mostly for PvE events (or WvW zerg fests), the Axe is what you want to look at. Combine it with the torch for a fire field f/e.

As for utilities, well i can realy advice bringing along Lightning reflexes esp. as you get higher in level. it breaks some effects and the extra dodge + endurance regen (more dodges) is realy helpfull…

After that it realy depends on what you like or not… and that will also determain which traits would work best.

Peircing arrows+ multishot . muddy terrain. barrage. All the AoE you’ll need

Axe + Torch + 2 traps skills (spike and poison) is what works for me. Open with axe 1 and 2 skills, move towards the target cluster, then toe-bomb with traps + torch skill 5

It takes more work and skill than a staff ele, and is more dangerous, but it’s doable