Overview:
This build has 3.1k Attack, 31% crit chance, almost 3k armor and 20k hp, with 2 healing skills, 2 ALL condition removal skills and 1 single condition removal skill.
Trait, rune, and skill:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQJARVjEV91FWSWs2Bg1DCDcwmCOt0pAVPP5VPaF;TYAqiMFJKyWkrIZRA
Equipment:
I use full knights/Emerald set for jewel, 1 knight for helm and the soldier for the rest of armor as well as soldier on GS.
For secondary weapon, i use shortbow over warhorn, because shortbow is excellent for both chasing and retreating, which i will explain later.
Trait and utility skill explanation:
Healing Spring – One of the best healing skill in the game. Initial heal + long hp reg boon + condition remove + aoe + water field (make leap heals and projector gain reg boon). I can’t really think of any healing skills that provide that much benefits at the same time.
Signet of Stone – One of the best defensive signet you can have in the game when you combine with the trait Signet of the Beastmaster-It gives you 6 sec of invincible! Some people may argue the long cooldown (96s with trait), but any invincible skills has long cooldown (ex. warrior’s endure pain), and if you look at the duration it is very cost-effective.
Signet of Renewal – The only conditional removal utility skill for ranger. Pretty self-explains. Someone might consider if Signet of the Beastmaster will make yourself draw condition from your allies. From my personal experience, I never get condition draw to me when i using it while combine with Signet of the Beastmaster, so I hope this is work as intended from Anet.
Quickening Zephyr –You should already know this if you are playing ranger. A lot of people use this skill wrong with GS. You should NOT use this with signet of stone. Quickening Zephyr make your GS skill 1 evade twice as fast, you don’t want to overlap the invincible from signet of stone. You should use signet of stone right after Quickening Zephyr ends and use skill 5 right after your signet of stone end, this way you minimal the damage you take for almost 12sec! (You can also use skill 4 after 1s later after you active skill 5, that way when enemy gets up and attack you again, he will get block and knockdown on the floor)
Rampage As One – It sync with signet of Lyssa really, really well. You got extra 5s of every boon and it transfer to your pet too because of the trait. With this build you can use it both offensive (with Quickening Zephyr), or defensive for taking advantage of the hp reg boon and conditional removal.
Signet of Wild (optional) – It is nice passive skill for hp reg, and 10s stability and 25% damage increase on active.
Entangle (optional) – Really good skill in WvW for offensive and defensive. You can use GS skill 3 go into the heart of the zergs active signet of stone, active entangle, get all boons and remove all the condition on you (since signet of stone doesn’t prevent condition) while immobilize and bleeding everyone around you. Then when signet of stone almost expires, run and roll out without fearing getting knockdown cause of stability! (If you get snare you can use signet of renewal)
Weapon explanation:
Great Sword – GS is the best defensive weapon a ranger can have in close combat. The skill 1 has evade on the 3rd chain. Skill 2 for extra condition damage. Skill 3 for both chasing and retreating. Skill 4 nice block and disable, especially when you facing theif or 100 blade wars. Skill 5…this as right now can only use as defensive. The animation is too long, and the gap closer is too short for chasing a running foe. It will miss most of the time if the person is running away from you, swiftness or not.
Short bow – Why short bow? First of all I don’t use it for damage. Since I has nearly no condition damage and that’s one of the main source of damage from short bow. But you will be amuse the ability of chasing down enemy and retreating.
Skill 5 is a 1200 range and it will stun your foe for 1s if they are running from you. Skill 4 is another long range snare that slow down your running foe. Combine with you auto attack. You will able to bleed and slow your foe to death. Whats better is you can switch to GS really quick and use skill 3 for gap closer and deal some hard damage on them. Skill 3 is amazing for retreating because you can use it while the enemy is facing your back, and it has relative low cooldown. What you usually do is you use skill 4 to snare your enemy and skill 5 right away to disable their chasing skill with daze, roll to opposite direction and get protection, use skill 3 while running, and protection expires roll again, then switch to GS and use skill 3.
*English is not my first language, so don’t be too picky on spelling and grammar :P