Guild Wars 2

Hello, I would like to know what gear I should have to make the best fractal. Jewelery and rings. My ranger armor cof with power and precision critical damage. But I need to increase toughness and vitality. Use longbow and a suggestion for the rune to put on this.

Why rangers bad for FotM:
1. Bows. Most bow attacks - projectiles. There is a lot of situations of 100% projectiles reflection. Especially at bonus level.
2. Pet. He will die extremely fast. Especially at10+ lvls, coz agony
3. Pet. He will aggroing unneeded mobs.
4. Pet. At bonus level he will be targeted very often even if he dead.
5. AOE. Rangers didn’t have good AOE, but sometimes it very needed.

If you or your party doesn’t afraid of this - use Knight gear and all will be Ok. FotM - just another dungeon, like CoF etc.

Actually I think you’re unfortunately already on the right track.

For most dungeons you start out needing to tank and use special utilities, but as you repeat it and become more experienced you start to focus on speeding up subsequent runs. Therefore straight up DPS starts to become more and more attractive.

As your dodging skills increase you find less and less of a need for tank stats. Infact, due to the way aggro works, its often better to have less tank than more. Enemies seem to want to smack the biggest tank in your group.

Try picking up a 1h sword and an offhand axe to compliment your LB. Put Ruby orbs on all of your Power, Prec, Crit armor.

Have a shortbow ready for some battles, because while the goal is to melee as much as possible, some battles just won’t support it. SB does better sustained damage than LB.

Sadly, warriors will pump out more DPS than you. Rangers have a lot of interesting condition builds, but the current condition system needs some help. Couple that with a lot of bosses with TONs of vitality and average toughness.

Toughness nerfs direct damage and starts to make conditions more attractive compared to raw damage, however very few dungeon encounters trade vitality for toughness.

My Ranger is lvl 76 in Fractals, and has been running full berserker with glass “cannon” traits (30/30/10/0/0) from the beginning. Key is just to dodge, and dodge a lot. Omnomberry ghost is a good consumable to go with it—even after nerf. I use Superior Sigil of Accuracy on my longbow.

For those saying “Ranger is lacking AOE”, you have some great options:

• Piercing arrows
• Traps
• Drake

I personally go with the traps.

Gear wise really depends on your build, but you should go for something that supports your current survibability level (how tough you are, can you take a hit?) If you wish to keep your CoF armor, I suggest you invest in Runes of the – (whatever gives you toughness +) -

Take a look at: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune

I went for Cursed Shore armor for this reason, even though they cost 42,000 karma a piece, they come with the Runes in them. I have a mix of Runes of Melandru + Rune of the Afflicted (for condition +) to support my beast master build. I am presuming you are more or less a glass cannon build so, if you are keeping your CoF gear, I suggest you trade a bit of that power you have for toughness + condition damage (this is something that 3 or 4 Rune of the Engineers will give you). If you would rather get more vitality AND toughness, go for Rune of the Soldier. I chose not to go with these because I used ascended amulets to recover some of power that I traded off, while also making sure they gave me much needed vitality.

Tip: Just something you should realize when it comes to fractals; your weapon choice / your skill choice should change depending on which fractal you’re facing. I always keep an axe / torch ready for the AoE damage and in my experience shortbow comes in handy than longbow, however you can keep longbow for boss fights if the boss is stationary. Don’t forget the bonus round where you should go melee for the shards as they will reflect everything you shoot at them, so switch your non bow or shortbow slot for your preferred melee approach.

Edit: Pet use… if you are not a beast master build you really need to be good at keeping your pet alive and have it support the party. As other people suggested, drakes are good at doing this. If you are a beastmaster, wolf is amazing at tanking champions + healing spring on him, he will live for a long time. Fern hound for those amazing aoe heals, jaguar + quickening zhepir is just awesome dps without being detected due to stealth. That’s why I chose beast master: I can definitely keep my pets alive + high pet damage + condition damage / good trap use, while I stay alive the whole time.

I just run fotm 10 for dailies and rings, usually use 2 differente builds depending on my WvW build atm.

First one is full berserker, eagle runes, LB (stack power) and SB (bleed on critical).
QZ, Lightning Refelex, SoH

Second one is trapper with rabid armor and a mix of rabid trinkets with ruby jewels for exotic or berserker for ascended, undead runes, LB (stack power, mostly for aoe) and Axe(aoe Fire)/Horn(bleed on critical).
Fire trap, spike trap, SoH/venom trap/ice trap (depends on dungeon and boss)

Both work without problems, but one thing that will help a lot is to change pets according to dungeon and boss, for example one thing you can do is use spiders/devourer on arpies or bears for the poison boss on the same dungeon so he can tank while you dps from behind and activate the fan.

And as everyone already said, the most important thing is to know how to dodge, and always bring a sword for maw.

One skill that could be very important is search and rescue to revive allies, but I just use it if the party is getting killed in the bosses.

SilverWF.4789:

Why rangers bad for FotM:
1. Bows. Most bow attacks – projectiles. There is a lot of situations of 100% projectiles reflection. Especially at bonus level.
2. Pet. He will die extremely fast. Especially at10+ lvls, coz agony
3. Pet. He will aggroing unneeded mobs.
4. Pet. At bonus level he will be targeted very often even if he dead.
5. AOE. Rangers didn’t have good AOE, but sometimes it very needed.

If you or your party doesn’t afraid of this – use Knight gear and all will be Ok. FotM – just another dungeon, like CoF etc.

It’s funny how nobody complains about mesmer clones getting Jade Maw’s attacks. I mean, the ranger pet literally gets it once and you can leave it down for the rest of the fight…it’s not a DPS fight, ya know? Jade Maw is more about position, timing, and teamwork.

I’m level 24 FOTM (25 AR) with my ranger and I’d be further if I didn’t grind CoE and CoF so hard (with ranger) to craft Bolt. I mean, sometimes, if you don’t have crystals due to a variety of reasons, it can be a relief that a clone/pet gets targeted. This doesn’t happen much now that everyone has basically figured out how to “game” Jade Maw, but when FOTM first came out and no one knew what to do, this actually helped a lot.

You know, I’ve been playing ranger since the beta weekends and it’s really all I play. None of your points are correct, dude, I’m sorry.

1) I’m not aware of any “good” ranger dungeon builds that use bows, sorry. I don’t use bows in dungeons unless there’s a very good reason (longbow on CoE Flame Shield boss is really convenient). So this just demonstrates that you have a lack of knowledge about how to optimally perform with this profession and thus make a misinformed comment that furthers ridiculous dungeon discrimination against ranger players.

2) My pet does not die extremely fast and also does not die to agony like you say. You know when agony is going to hit! It’s not a mystery. You might, for example, hit Troll Unguent before agony kicks in…with a proper 20/20/0/0/30 dungeon beastmaster build and Signet of the Wild, if your pet dies like you claim, you messed up. You made a mistake. Own up to it.

3) LOL! It’s called “micro”. My pet never does this because my pet is like an extension of my arm. I am always aware of it’s location and health and if I’m kiting a mob, I’m pressing “return…return” every time the pet wants to do something else. It’s not that hard!

4) More than that! Rangers bring Healing Spring with a drake blast finisher; Rangers bring the best condition removal in the game Signet of Renewal (removes ALL conditions from nearby allies), Rangers bring Spotter (+70 precision to allies), Rangers bring the best downed state action in the game (hey, if I’m down, I want a ranger to help me, NOT a guardian), and ranger pets can tank aggro / lay frost trap helping the group kite even the toughest trash mobs.

Get a grip on yourself! Why are you so prejudiced? Some people like playing ranger and they have fun with it.

Chopps, you already made an entire separate topic on this … but that’s fine … I’ll reply to you here as well I guess.

(1) Leaving the ranger pet dead does not keep it from being targeted. There is nothing the Ranger can do to keep their pet from being targeted. Mesmers can either not summon illusions or time their summons so that they shatter the illusions before the next target is selected.

(2) Shortbow is an excellent weapon in dungeons. It provides solid dps, a good way to stack bleeds, poison, an extra evasion, cripple (and more bleeds from pet … though not as good, arg!), and a daze. That’s one heck of a weapon. I am of the opinion that 2 bows is a bad idea though as you often need to hit more than one mob and with 2 bows your only options are traps, pet AOE and longbow #5 unless you have piercing arrows in which case you could be fine.

(3) Pets are not able to always dodge the AOE circles at collosus. Pets can’t dodge the agony that affects everyone at Jade Maw. Pets have 0 agony resist. If you can’t swap it out, it’ll die.

(4) You are correct that good use of Attack / Return is required to keep the pet alive in dungeons. I’d add good use to Swap to that as well.

(5) I agree that Healing Spring is one of the best heals a class can bring for its group to use.

(6) When it comes to being downed, I want someone who can do it without worrying about them also being downed. Several classes have rez abilities that aren’t plagued by Ranger Pet bugs, are on shorter cooldowns, and only require them to target you and cast a 2-3 sec utility. Stealth and Invulnerability (I use distortion on Mesmer) are also quite helpful.

(7) I honestly think the best thing the Ranger has going for it when rezzing allies is on-demand quickness from pet swap.

Chopps, I don’t know what’s going on with you today, but I’d recommend that you calm down before making more posts today.

If you want to play Ranger for FotM then do it. Don’t get discouraged because others say Rangers aren’t viable to the game. If you can make it happen then you can make it happen. Chopps is right about “micro” if you can do that you and your pet have a better chance to survive and finish. Find something that works with the way you play.

We’re not “bad” for Fractals. We’re difficult.

Sebrent.3625:

Chopps, you already made an entire separate topic on this … but that’s fine … I’ll reply to you here as well I guess.

(1) Leaving the ranger pet dead does not keep it from being targeted. There is nothing the Ranger can do to keep their pet from being targeted. Mesmers can either not summon illusions or time their summons so that they shatter the illusions before the next target is selected.

(2) Shortbow is an excellent weapon in dungeons. It provides solid dps, a good way to stack bleeds, poison, an extra evasion, cripple (and more bleeds from pet … though not as good, arg!), and a daze. That’s one heck of a weapon. I am of the opinion that 2 bows is a bad idea though as you often need to hit more than one mob and with 2 bows your only options are traps, pet AOE and longbow #5 unless you have piercing arrows in which case you could be fine.

(3) Pets are not able to always dodge the AOE circles at collosus. Pets can’t dodge the agony that affects everyone at Jade Maw. Pets have 0 agony resist. If you can’t swap it out, it’ll die.

(4) You are correct that good use of Attack / Return is required to keep the pet alive in dungeons. I’d add good use to Swap to that as well.

(5) I agree that Healing Spring is one of the best heals a class can bring for its group to use.

(6) When it comes to being downed, I want someone who can do it without worrying about them also being downed. Several classes have rez abilities that aren’t plagued by Ranger Pet bugs, are on shorter cooldowns, and only require them to target you and cast a 2-3 sec utility. Stealth and Invulnerability (I use distortion on Mesmer) are also quite helpful.

(7) I honestly think the best thing the Ranger has going for it when rezzing allies is on-demand quickness from pet swap.

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Chopps, I don’t know what’s going on with you today, but I’d recommend that you calm down before making more posts today.

Lol! I’m calm, that’s just how I write. I write with vigor and force. If someone is making claims without proof, I call them out. I come from a science background and we “attack” each other’s work like this constantly so this is completely normal to me.

But the fact is, SB is not as good in PvE as it is in PvP. The stun/daze, the cripple, and the poison don’t matter. All it’s good for is stacking might with sigil of strength and even that isn’t as good as a nice AoE Richochet doing 1500 crits per bounce.

Don’t get me wrong: SB is amazing PvP weapon, of course. It really is. But when you play dungeons and you want to do max DPS with ranger—direct, physical damage, you’re going to have to cleave.

Also, I want to point out that I played level 24 FOTM the other day and agony did not kill my pet. I will double check that and get back to you. I’m also planning on doing some PvE videos to help the community with ranger PvE play, builds, and doing big time damage with the profession everyone thinks is kitten

SilverWF.4789:

Why rangers bad for FotM:
1. Bows. Most bow attacks – projectiles. There is a lot of situations of 100% projectiles reflection. Especially at bonus level.
2. Pet. He will die extremely fast. Especially at10+ lvls, coz agony
3. Pet. He will aggroing unneeded mobs.
4. Pet. At bonus level he will be targeted very often even if he dead.
5. AOE. Rangers didn’t have good AOE, but sometimes it very needed.

If you or your party doesn’t afraid of this – use Knight gear and all will be Ok. FotM – just another dungeon, like CoF etc.

I find this post really amusing, since most of your points revolve around the bonus fractal, which is super easy, and oftentimes where rangers are most useful (high level fractals with “search and rescue”).

Nonetheless, lets go down the line:

• 1. There’s only one instance in fractals that projectiles are 100% reflected, which is in the bonus fractal. Because of this, I and any other smart player switches to greatsword (or any melee weapon). The fact that you target rangers because of this is funny, since I see elementalists hitting themselves all the time with fire balls.

• 2. Gotta agree with you here, pets are fairly useless in fractals since there’s so much AOE and agony that kills them almost instantly.

• 3. What “unneeded mobs” are you referring too? while yes this is annoying in regular dungeons, there aren’t many mobs in FOTM that you run through, so I’m not sure where you’re coming from.

• 4. Yes this is annoying, and Robert Hrouda says he purposefully made jade maw target pets so that they can be used strategically. They know there’s a bug though that causes him to target dead pets, and they’re hopefully gonna fix it soon.

• 5. Huh? Have you ever used ranger longbow? Barrage is a huge AOE that does lots of damage and cripples enemies inside, so again, not really sure what your talking about. While we may not have as many AOE fields as Elementalists, most classes don’t.

Long story short, most of your points are false/irrelevant. That being said, rangers are quite underpowered in terms of utilities and general support abilities, making them worse in FOTM than guardians/mesmers etc…
So rangers aren’t “bad” for FOTM, just worse than some other classes, but if played correctly, can carry their weight.

P.S. I run full zerker gear on my ranger and hold my own, albeit switch to PVT on grawl/cliffside/dredge.

You might want to give Knight’s a try. It gives you damage without making you a complete glass cannon, which you don’t want to be in fractals anyway. You should get enough toughness to take a hit if you mess up, but you’ll still follow the main focus as the fractal level increases – making better use of dodges/evades/stuns/positioning to completely avoid damage.