Guild Wars 2

What the June 25th patch has wrought:

Significant buffs to this build. Longbow damage is significantly buffed and spirits are now significantly better for exactly the same trait point investments. Frost Spirit is now worth 7.5% damage to party rather than 3.5%.

Hey all,

I’m posting this because I noticed there are way too few guides to help Rangers out. I think that this build is pretty much the best rangers are capable of, and I’m happy with the results.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQJAzXjEVR2dVWVsWCg1j9CsvuAOjDZ0VoUA-jwxAYrATWAoPwJvioxWcLiGruGT5SEVDA-e

How is the damage?

High. Not Warrior high, but high. 5% more longbow damage, 10% damage when above 90% health, 10% damage when endurance is full, 10% damage when flanking… these add up. And at max range, you can maintain all of these boosts very easily.

LB 1 can hit for 3.5k, about on par with warriors 1 move. When you can keep cats alive, that’s a pet hitting for 800 and critting for like 1.5k.

Sword 1 move hits for 26% more damage than LB 1 move. So when you can melee, melee.

If you are uncomfortable meleeing altogether, swap to axe for a hefty DPS loss.

Utility provides by this build:

Frost spirit, always. For a traited 7.5% increase to damage for party. Before people cry, with the recent 60% health buff, and if you keep them near you and use healing spring to keep them up, Spirits will almost never die until they are off cooldown.

Stone spirit when needed (No Guardian), for decent protection uptime for party.

If your group does not have either 2 Guardians, or 1 elementalist, add Sun Spirit to give your group burning damage. Especially consider using sun spirit if you have a heavy condition damager. A condition necro or condition thief will suddenly gain access to burning, boosted by their own condition damage and condition duration. This can massively buff the condition damagers in your group.

10 stacks of vulnerability on target from LB3, the equivalent of Warrior’s “On My Mark” but on a shorter cooldown. 10% damage to target. Very few pugs hit 25 stacks of vulnerability on boss’s, so this is a huge boost.

5 stacks of might for 11 seconds every thirty seconds, using Jungle Stalker.

Healing Spring, one of the best heals in the game. Be sure to drop it near boss or wherever allies need health. Plenty of Regen via using combos inside of healing spring.

15s of fury/might/swiftness every 35 seconds from Warhorn 5. 42% uptime.

How to Play

When you reach the location you will spend most of the fight (minimum possible distance away to reach 1000+ range), spawn your Spirit(s). it is important to pick a good spot so they benefit from your healing spring.

Use Sword/Warhorn off-set to provide 15s fury/might/swiftness to your party every 35 seconds. Use Warhorn 4 as you’re running away before swapping to LB.

With Longbow, always use 3 as your first priority unless the target is sitting at 25 stacks of vulnerability. Longbow 5 is your highest damager in AOE situations or if you know the target will stand in it for its full duration.

Only use longbow 4 as a Projectile Finisher unless you take aggro and need survival. It is a major annoyance to melee damagers.

Longbow 2 is your best damager if not at max range, and in some gear, appears to be best damager overall due to the faster cast speed. If not at max range, use LB 3 on cooldown as it beats LB 1. If you aren’t sure if you’re at max range, use the priority of 5, 3, 2, 1. If you are sure you are at max range, use 3 (if need vuln), 1.

Longbow 1, at max range, will hit pretty hard and do a majority of your damage.

When you notice the group around the boss taking lots of damage, run in and give them a healing spring to keep them up, especially since it will provide a lot of heals via whirling, blast, and projectile finishers. Remember that you can use any of your projectile finishers to give yourself tons of regen while standing in the water field.

Swap to Spirit of Nature elite when your group needs it. The +100% health, and you staying near it with healing spring will actually make it a VERY powerful healer.

Please note all of your projectile finishers you have available to grant yourself a huge amount of extra healing when they are used in healing spring.

When you find yourself in need of stamina, swap to Axe for sigil of energy useage.

Remember that with Piercing, ALL of your moves are AOE with proper positioning.

Pets:

Are they going to have trouble staying alive? Spider/devourer because they are ranged.

Are they not? Cats for boss, Drakes for AoE. Specifically I mean Jaguar for max damage (crits when stealthed), and Jungle Stalkers for 5 stacks of might to party for 11 seconds every 30 seconds.

Does your melee group need help and someone to do some of the tanking? Bears. This helps in groups without many heavies.

Reef Drake feels sturdy and does nice AoE. If you really have trouble with pet survival, brown bear and reef drake make a nice combination.

Gear:

Full zerker and scholar runes helps a lot with damage. Optionally swap legs, helm, legs, chest to PVT or Knights for extra survival, in that order, swapping as few pieces as possible.

Ranger moves have poor scaling, so Sigil of Fire benefits them a bit more than other classes.

You can bring an alternate Longbow with Bloodlust to get 25 stacks, then switch to the one with Fire Sigil.

Tweaks:

I think this is optimal, or I wouldn’t be recommending it. However, if you hate spirits, you can add 5 points to marksmanship to give pets the ability to heal on critical hits, and then put 10 in beastmastery to boost their healing power. This allows for much tankier Jaguars.

You can alterantatively gain like 100 power by swapping Vigorous Spirits for vitality—> power, if you dont need the 100% bonus health to keep them alive. In general, only the 30/25 part is important.

I hate Spirits!!

You can move around everything other than 30/25 and swap your utilities out. They are not essential to this build, although I do believe they are the best use of the talent points and utility slots.

So are Rangers still underpowered?

I quite like this build. I don’t feel that in the average PUG, this build is anything but a very nice boost and great use of a party spot. 42% uptime on fury is huge. Vulnerability and spirits are very nice, and healing spring is insane on stacking fights. In a min/max Guard/War/Mesmer group? You aren’t going to be bringing much of value, sadly, that they don’t bring already. This is a balance issue on Anet’s end.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/83536-ranger-longbowspirits-dps-build/

This is a pretty standard DPS Longbow Ranger build. I use something similar, minus the spirits. Only time I use the spirits is if I want to troll people from the roof in Khylo. Generally I find either increased range or Signet of the Beastmaster works best. When I troll in Khylo I knock people off when they try to come up.

Didn’t someone say there is a bug as of the patch that decreased damage with LB though?

Ashanor.5319:

Didn’t someone say there is a bug as of the patch that decreased damage with LB though?

It’s a lie. I tested it and I was still getting as much damage as I had before: 800~ non-crit damage up to 1k~ crit damage when used in clumped up zergs.

Also, tagging for addition to Compilation Thread later

I’ll edit this later when I add it.

Edit: Added to the compilation thread!

Ashanor.5319:

This is a pretty standard DPS Longbow Ranger build. I use something similar, minus the spirits. Only time I use the spirits is if I want to troll people from the roof in Khylo. Generally I find either increased range or Signet of the Beastmaster works best. When I troll in Khylo I knock people off when they try to come up.

Didn’t someone say there is a bug as of the patch that decreased damage with LB though?

Agreed that this is a pretty common/obvious build.

I just couldn’t find it posted anywhere (not saying that means it isn’t, just that it was hard to find), so I wanted to share it. I know that when I first hit 80 in an MMO I mostly just google builds and hopefully someone explains what buttons to hit and such. =)

Considering it comes up on google if you type “Ranger DPS build” or “Ranger Longbow build” i feel my work is done. =)

That’s also why I tried to explain options that involve abandoning the spirits, so that newer players can find this and start to learn how to make their own builds.

That looks like a good longbow PvE build to me.

For most PvP, of course, you’d probably want something more mobile than using the spirits (although if the dumb things would stay with you as you move around, that would be helpful).