I’ve been browsing this forum a while now and seen alot of helpful posts so I thought I’d try give something back. Here’s a list of different tricks and build options I’ve learned on my ranger that I’ll share with you.
1. If you have a bird or cat pet (which you should in most builds) always put 10 points into skirmishing to get +30% crit damage. This is a large damage boost for comparatively little investment, and also comes with the minor trait that grants swiftness on weapon swap.
2. If roaming in WvW or in structured PvP, equip wolf as your second pet. When you go down swap to it immediately and it will use its knockdown, interrupting the first stomp attempt. You can stop the second attempt with your daze, and then use the wolfs F2 to stop the third stomp. This will often result in the enemy dying before they can kill you due to damage they will be taking while channeling constantly.
3. Movement speed boosts don’t stack, so if your build has lots of swiftness, don’t take signet of the hunt or the 30% pet speed boost, as they will not do anything.
4. Heal as One is NOT a terrible skill. It has the shortest cool down of all the heals, heals the highest amount instantly. And when cast every time cool down is up, will workout healing MORE than TU would.
5. Mainhand axe is not a condi weapon. The only reason its found in most condi builds is because it is the only other mainhand weapon available. It actually scales very well with power and is a viable alternative to the longbow in short range fights due to its faster attack rate and slow.
6. It is OK to use your heal to save your pet even if you are not low hp.
7. In WvW bird pets are more use than cats due to their 50% swiftness uptime and that they attack in bursts of 2. This allows them to better stick to their targets and not waste time chasing around.
8. Just because you do more damage at melee doesn’t mean you should ignore your ranged weapons, you have the longest range weapon in the game use it. You should try and use your ranged weapon for as long as possible before the targets gets in range of you this way you will began the fight with a massive HP advantage.
(This only applies when solo, In dungeons it is better to just stack in melee)
9. If you are doing dungeons and fractals, take as much utility and group benefits as you can, this will be far more help than a small damage boost to just yourself.
9.5. Always take healing spring for the aoe heal and water field, and a drake to cleave and use blast finishers. (River drake provides great aoe burst with its F2)
10. You don’t need points in nature magic to take spirits, their affects are the same regardless and proc so easily that doubling the proc chance really isn’t needed.
11. If you have points in wilderness survival and took 50% fall damage, switch it out when in areas that don’t have drops and cliffs.
12. Longbow 2, rapid fire continues to track and hit targets after they stealth, if cast right before enemy enters stealth it will keep hitting them and by looking at the arrows you can see where they are.
I hope you found this helpful, feel free to post your own methods and strategies.