Guild Wars 2

Hey guys,

I have a norn ranger sitting on her behind doing nothing productive, and I’m in the mood for a change of pace from my main (I main a thief, and I mostly do PvE and dungeons).

Problem is I have absolutely no idea how to use the ranger, besides the general concept of “make pets tank while you range and kill mobs from a distance.” I’m sure pets have other purposes in the life of a ranger besides just that! Pls advise on how to use the pets and the professional skills on the ranger!

I’m also not versed on the popular builds for the ranger, be it for leveling or for end game. I’m looking for a build that is not condition based (because my thief is), and ideally a build that’s not a glass cannon but has a lot of high DPS and AoE potential (because my thief can’t really do that). My ranger is only like level 17 or so, I have a long way to go before I need to commit to any build but I like having an idea of having some direction.

I’d really appreciate some advice on a good leveling build or a good end game build (or ideally, both!)

Use a shortbow.
Press 1 while moving around a lot.
Pray.

I’d actually advise trying to share / split mob focus and damage with your pet, rather than relying on them to do all the tanking. Troll unguent and heal as one become significantly better when you utilize both halves of the healing. (This doesn’t mean you should both stand in melee cleave or anything, just get your pet on one side of the mob and yourself on the other)

So far on my ranger I’ve enjoyed having 5 points in wilderness survival for natural vigor (+50% endurance recharge, so dodges are less expensive), and I frequently hear 5 points in beast mastery toted as essential (2s of quickness on pet swap, which is pretty nice)

Beyond that you probably need to find out which weapons you like. What have you experimented with so far?

This guy does a awesome job on helping explain things.

Lyndis.2584:

Use a shortbow.
Press 1 while moving around a lot.
Pray.

Yea that about describes my current play style lol. I was hoping to get some advice on how to improve on that and gain some insight on a bit more sophistication and skill with playing the ranger!

As per what I experimented with, the greatest appeal of the ranger to me is the ability to range (comeon, it’s a ranger after all!) So I really like the SB, the LB is ok too but I like the SB slightly more.

I have to say I was more than just pleasantly surprised with the ranger’s skills on melee weapons. The sword mainhand probably will take some mastering on my part but I defn see the potential to evade and control the pace of the fight if I can get the timing down.

I can defn see myself going SB with a sword/warhorn offset for utility or sword/axe for mob swarms. That being said I really didn’t experiment too much with the GS or other weaponset. I’m used to having one set of weapons for single target damage and another for mob control, but I haven’t quite figured it out yet

Try this post too. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Little-Ranger-Tips