Guild Wars 2

I played ranger in sPvP quite a bit back during launch (the class was extremely versatile and good in almost every situations), farmed up a champion hunter title, got bored and quit.

I am back a year later and starting to enjoy PvE and WvW. Are rangers a viable PvE class to do dungeons/WvW with? What is an ideal armor/weapon/jewel/skill setup to get your feet wet with the current meta?

Thanks, really appreciate any comments or advice you may give!

Should I go for a power ranger or for a condition ranger?

Good Tofu.9376:

Are rangers a viable PvE class to do dungeons/WvW with?

Viable, yes. Enjoyable too. However, apart from roaming in wvw, there’s nothing you can do that some other class can’t do better.

In dungeons, i’d forget about conditions, due to the caps being reached so easily if there’s already another condition class in the group. Power should bring better sustained DPS which is what you want on the bosses. Then bring some support: search and rescue is always handy, as is a well placed Frost Spirit. Rampage as one will provide you with your own long stability when needed, which will spare you some embarassing deaths.

In WvW, if you’re roaming alone or in a small group, you can have fun with plenty of build types. Beastmaster is fun, traps is fun, conditions work nicely (and synergize very well with traps), power can be an option too, the longbow stealth providing some very useful recovery time now, and in a small party, spirits will distract and buff.

WvW in or around the zerg is something else entirely. You have no real big aoe burst and not much decent spammable aoe dps. Piercing arrows help after a fashion, and greatsword can be half decent in the melee train. Conditions are hit and miss, as on the positive, lots of them are AoE, but on the downside, a decent zerg will pack tons of condition clear so a lot of your skills will be cancelled out fast. Whichever way you go though (in or around), you need to pack as much survival as you can. You will be cc’ed to death and nuked before you know it, so make sure you give yourself a chance.

My recommendation when starting to wvw is to start with easily obtainable pow/vit/tou armour (4/6 from karma in orr, the rest from badges or ascalonian catacombs) and jewellry, cheap soldier runes, and go from there. It works well by default with a power build (longbow+greatsword is a nice mix of range/close and offense/defense), and you can switch pieces as you feel comfortable to increase your DPS. Jewellry slots tends to give you the most oomph for zerker stats.

tldr: not the best class to do it, but it’s doable and fun. A P/V/T gear set is never wasted, so start with it and switch as you go.

I’m not neccessary the best ranger but willing to shed and help another!

For WvW wise, survivability is important, well; got my kitten handed to me in solo roaming just now so here’s how it goes now, at least. Feel free to comment and improve

People tend to stunlock you, then hit on quickness to burst you down

Entangle is useful for a bit to hold someone down, since it just happens so fast. Or just swap it with RampageAsOne depending on the situation

condition heals and stunbreak is important, we got a signet for that which is awesome.

TrollUngent is useful since your pet becomes fragile so cast it early.

lastly, I’m still figuring out how to stunlock someone but only have GreatSword5 and ShortBow5 in mind.

Thanks for the advice!

Is it possible for me to run the shortbow + sword/horn build that was so dominant in sPvP a year ago?

I remember that build being nearly unkillable. The sword/horn offered the best escape/kiting mechanisms in the game. You could also 1v1 just about any class aside from an expertly played mesmer.