Guild Wars 2

Hello Rangers!

I was finally able to purchase an entire complement of Settler gear for my Ranger. I haven’t had much look getting the Southsun camps cleared, but got lucky the other night so I figured I’d go ahead and stock up.

I’ve been looking through the Ranger forums (on several sites) and I don’t see a whole lot of information about using Settlers gear. As a quick reminder, the stats are: Toughness (major), Condition Dmg (minor), and Healing (minor)

Is this gear set still viable for anything? If so, what kind of builds are best for it? I’m partial to bow use and run mostly in WvW (solo, small group, and zergs) but would love to be able to solo a camp with this character too. While I could completely gear 100% in Settler’s, I don’t mind mixing in some alternate trinkets or weapons.

Thank you very much for any insight ya’ll can provide.

Check out hyjaxx’s build (google it). No bow though.

I would go sword/torch and axe/dagger for the reasons Faux Sheaux outlined in his post here (google). I use Runes of the Undead.

You can easily solo camps with this build. I enable the fast-cast ground targeting in the options menu (need to turn it off if you man an arrow cart).

Build is good solo (perma swiftness) or in small groups. Very tough for a thief to take you down which is important as thieves come gunning for rangers. Weaker once numbers are greater than 10, so not recommended for use in zergs in my opinion.

You could try it with a bow, but you are always swapping weapons with this build and I think axe/offhand is better as you can stack a variety of conditions on the enemy which makes it tougher to cleanse.

Still viable, but in the current condi spam, it isn’t as good as apoth because toughness is no defense against conditions. I’ll let others help you decide on the build as I don’t run a healing power ranger for various reasons.

@Samis.1750 : I’ve read hyjaxx’s build quite extensively and may have even watched some of his videos. I definately lack his coordination, so my reluctance to jump fully into hyjaxx’s build is probably a L2P issue for me. Maybe practice will make perfect(ish) though. I’ve always played (leveling and PvE) with axe as my primary weapon so I’m at least 1/4 of the way there! haha.

I’ll see if I can dig up Faux’s post. It’s not ringing a bell right now.

Thanks for ya’lls input.

I run a mix of apoth/settler’s in wvw. Sword Dagger + Axe Torch.

Still viable. Can’t say I’ve lost a 1v1 more than once to the same person. Either a win or a stalemate.

Pretty good small man roaming, good support through healing spring, condi removal signet, and condi removal/rezzes on the elite.

If you run those and Empathetic Bond, you should pretty much never die to a condition build ever.

Sucks for zerging.

OP: I would buy lvl 80 masterwork Apothecary gear in the slots that you need to test out the build. I used all green gear for 1st to test it out, but since you have Settler’s armor you are a step ahead. Settler’s trinkets are cheap as are Superior Runes of the Undead. Buy some Sigils (buy cheaper Corruption Sigil for now – Geomancy was cheaper as I recall) and you’re ready to go.