Guild Wars 2

So yesterday I played my long forgotten ranger in a dungeon for the first time and realized how fun this class actually can be, despite of what people say about ranger being a crappy class. Afterwards I came up with this build and I’d like to hear what people who’ve played rangers for a while think of this build.

Reasoning: This build is mainly for PvE and dungeons. I wanted to deal damage without playing a glass canon, so I tried to find a mix of traits/utilities and gear that would accomplish this. The combination of damage and survivability comes from utilizing the pets more as well as using them as an utility for additional damage and group support. Survability will come not only from the high amount of toughness, but also from passive heals from skills and pets. I also use signets because they are just great and can be used in so many ways. I honestly don’t know why people often complain about signets. I will explain all this more detailed further down.

Build links:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/ranger/?6|3.1c.h2|c.1c.h8.7.1c.h2|1n.71k.1n.71k.1n.71k.1n.71k.1n.71k.1n.71k|1n.67.1n.61.1n.61.1n.61.1n.61.cc.9c|u48b.0.0.a1.u24c|0.0|e (stats for PvE and traits)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAT8XjEV91JWCWs2Bi1DCFoB9egea1eXBQdyHuyK;TkAqhMDJGyOkbI5QrIGFsLA (utilities, traits, pets, etc).

Gear: As for now I chose to go for Knight gear and some Soldier gear (as in first link). You may chose to go for pure soldier but I wanted to get more damage out of the build. You should have an attack of around 3000 and crit chance of 29%. You gain additional 11% crit chance from max stack of Sigil of Minor Accuracy. You also get fury from your elite skill. Overall it gives decent crit chance as well as high base attack. Around 18200 health and almost 2800 armor.

Weapon: Okey, so here is the fun part. For this build I chose Longbow and Sword + Axe.

I know that many people do not like longbow, but I do like LB much more than SB so the main reason why I chose it is because I find it most fun weapon to play with. However it does as well provide much better burst damage than SB. You may if you want swap LB for SB.

As my second weapon set I chose Sword in main hand because it does decent damage and attacks quickly. You also have 2 evades on it and auto attack allows you to stack might for extra damage.
For off hand I chose Axe, why? Well you could either go dagger, which I choose not to because it’s more condition based. Warhorn is really good because of it’s second skill, however you already have other sources for fury and speed. Axe off hand has lower cooldowns over all. As well as doing more damage and being 2 combo finishers. 2nd skill does reflect projectels, which can be very useful.

Alternative: You can swap LB for SB as your ranged weapon if you do not like using LB. You can also swap it for greatsword in situations when you won’t be needing range. I do like GS as well so I’ll be using this weapon too in some occasions.
Instead of S/A you could go A/A if you want some more range. For example you could use GS and A/A, that would give you both close combat and range without any bow if you don’t wish to use one. Axe in main hand however does somewhat less damage than the sword.

Traits: 30/0/0/10/30

Now I will explain the reasoning behind my traits.

Signet Mastery: Signets recharge 20% faster
Piercing Arrows: All arrow attacks pierce targets
Signet of the Beastmaster: Active effects of signets also affect you

Signet Mastery is so you can use the active effect more frequently. You’ll be using both the active and passive effect however. I’ll explain this later. Piercing Arrows is really nice for the ”AoE effect”. If you chose not to equip bow, you can go for Beastmaster’s Bond that gives you fury and might when pet’s hp reaches 50%. Signet of Beastmaster will make signets affect you as well as pet. I will explain this further down.

Circle of Life: Create a healing spring on death.

This was personal choice for the remaining 10 points since 30 in Marksmanship and Beastmastery is mandatory for this build. It should be very useful in dungeons however.

Master’s Bond: Your pet has a bond with you that increases its attributes each time you kill a foe. When it is defeated or deactivated, the bond is reset
Compassion Training: Pets heal for more
Natural Healing:Your pets have natural health regeneration

The reason why I went 30 in beastmastery is so that your pets gets more survivabilty through additional 300 points to all attributes, plus Natural Healing trait. Natural healing also gives passive healing for yourself. It heals for 133 and I’ve recently discovered that it scales with Pet’s healing power.

Altogether this helps you to utilize the pet skills for their support without having pets constantly dying. Keep in mind that you can put pets on passive to utitlize F2 when you need to keep your pet out of AoE and such. The same reasoning goes for the Master’s Bond trait. It gives a max stack of 25 and a 10% per stack for vitality, toughness power and precision (according to wiki). This means you should keep one pet as your main pet, since the stack will reset when you swap. And then swap when the pet dies or when it’s really necessary. Compassion training trait gives additional 350 healing power to the pet, so it helps the passive healing and the group healing (see further down). This trait improves passive healing for yourself as well as pet from Natural Healing.

Utilities:Signet of Renewal, Signet of the Wild, Signet of the Hunt/Signet of Stone. Rampager as One as elite skill. Healing Spring as healing skill.

The reason why I chose to make a signet build is because it’s very versatile. Trap builds are fun but it’s better for a condition builds (something I rather use in sPvP). Survival skills are something I usually ran with before, but I found signets to be more fun and they do bring more to the table imho. Let’s check them out a bit closer.

Signet of Renewal.Passive: Cures condition every 10th second. Active: Your pet pulls all conditions from nerby allies to itself. But even more importantly it’s a stun breaker! It has 48sec cd when traited, but it’s also one of the signets that don’t really benefit much from Signet of Beastmaster trait. Afaik the active doesn’t work on you. It should be used at your main condition removal if you have a lot of conditions on you. Elsewise it’s better to save it for the stun breaker and use your other condition removals (heal and pet).

Signet of the Wild. Passive: gives regeneration to you and your pet. Active: Your pet grows larger, dealing more damage, gaining stability. This gives addition passive healing to your pet as well as you. It heals the pet for 125 + 25% of player’s healing power and 62 + 6% healing power to you. The active effect can be used as an additional stability for 12 sec. It also makes you and your pet do 25% more damage when activated.

Signet of the Hunt. Passive: Increase speed by 25%. Active: Your pets next attack does more damage. The skill has only 24 sec cd when traited and gives the speed you otherwise lack. Active effect gives 50% more damage on your next attack. In dungeons however Signet of Stone could be considered more useful since it prevents you from taking any damage for 6 sec. The passive affect is kinda meh though, only giving you 35 thoughess and 120 to your pet.

Instead of a 3rd signet I like to use Search and Rescue inside dungeons, since it revives dead players as well. This is really useful when you can’t revive someone yourself. So in this build I swap between these 5 utilities mentioned above.

Pets: Main pet is Brown Bear because bears have higher survivability. It also gives regeneration to allies. I used Brown Bear mainly duo to F2 for the extra condition removal.

As secondary pet I would use Red Moa. It has fairly high health. F2 gives you an extra fury. The pet also has a heal.

I’d also suggest Fern Hound or Wolf. They have less health than the Bear, but more toughness and attack. Fern Hound gives extra regen through F2 and Wolf has fear which can be very useful.

Although I used 30 points in Beastmastery, I’d suggest using pets that already have high defense for dungeons. The pets in this build should provide support, so fairly high base defense and the traits and points in beastmastery should help you keeping pet alive and use it for group support.

Ditch Master’s Bond. Imho, you’ll get more use out of constantly swapping pets and using their skills and gaining quickness. There are too many drawbacks with the current mechanic of Master’s Bond to be worth it, and you’ll always have that feeling “ kitten I had to swap pets again!”.

@OGDeadHead: Well I haven’t tried it out much yet, so I want to test it first. But you are probably right that ranger benefit more from swapping.

Updated the 2nd post about Natural healing trait. It DOES give passive heal to yourself as well and it scales with pet’s healing power so Natural healing and Compassion Training goes really well together.

Hiya, I am a newish ranger and i’m keen to learn how this build has been working for you, it’s seems quite different and interesting versus the similar builds i have seen previously. Any chance of an update?

thanks

Hmm I’ve tried this trait build with clerics set before. Signet of Stone doesn’t seem all that helpful. I’d take lightning reflex for evade, and you’ll have 2 stun breaks now (pretty good considering that each stun break cooldown can be quite long).

You could take two moas (blue and red) instead and replace Compassion training with Vigorous training. The blue moa will give 10 seconds of protection (33% damage reduction for 10 seconds!), while providing 5 seconds of vigor (more dodge) when you swap pets.

A tactic with offhand axe is to place a healing spring before hitting the spinning attack. You’ll stack up quite a bit of (more) regen. But I still prefer warhorn. Double Fury from horn and red moa is nice. You also gain might and swiftness.

Just out of curiosity. How much are you hitting with Sword1 attack (non-crit) with 3000 power? 400-500dmg?

You could also take 5 points from Marksmanship (signet cooldown is too long, better off with passive signets), and 5 points from Nature’s Magic. Then put 10 points into skirmishing for a little more crit. And trait for Pet’s Prowess (+30% crit damage for pets). I think you might have a higher total damage output this way while sacrificing very little.

Since when does natural healing affect the player? never has for me only my pet.

Manekk.6981:

Since when does natural healing affect the player? never has for me only my pet.

hmmm. really? I know its not in the trait description, but I used to have signet of the wild + natural healing (3 weeks ago?) and saw two different ticks of heal on my ranger.

kiwituatara.6053:

Manekk.6981:

Since when does natural healing affect the player? never has for me only my pet.

hmmm. really? I know its not in the trait description, but I used to have signet of the wild + natural healing (3 weeks ago?) and saw two different ticks of heal on my ranger.

I’ve certainly never seen it, the description most definetly indicates it’s for pet only, wiki states it’s for pet only and it’s not affected by healing power from either pet or ranger I’ve switched all kinds of gear, signets and traits around it stays a 125tick and only for pet never on me.

Could you possibly have seen a regen on yourself from spring/traits or even other players?

Manekk.6981:

kiwituatara.6053:

Manekk.6981:

Since when does natural healing affect the player? never has for me only my pet.

hmmm. really? I know its not in the trait description, but I used to have signet of the wild + natural healing (3 weeks ago?) and saw two different ticks of heal on my ranger.

I’ve certainly never seen it, the description most definetly indicates it’s for pet only, wiki states it’s for pet only and it’s not affected by healing power from either pet or ranger I’ve switched all kinds of gear, signets and traits around it stays a 125tick and only for pet never on me.

Could you possibly have seen a regen on yourself from spring/traits or even other players?

I don’t think so? It was regen (with two different numbers ticking) after fall damage. I’ll test it out again some time. Paleeshi might have a better understanding for Natural Healing than I do~ Maybe he can confirm this too

kiwituatara.6053:

Manekk.6981:

kiwituatara.6053:

Manekk.6981:

Since when does natural healing affect the player? never has for me only my pet.

hmmm. really? I know its not in the trait description, but I used to have signet of the wild + natural healing (3 weeks ago?) and saw two different ticks of heal on my ranger.

I’ve certainly never seen it, the description most definetly indicates it’s for pet only, wiki states it’s for pet only and it’s not affected by healing power from either pet or ranger I’ve switched all kinds of gear, signets and traits around it stays a 125tick and only for pet never on me.

Could you possibly have seen a regen on yourself from spring/traits or even other players?

I don’t think so? It was regen (with two different numbers ticking) after fall damage. I’ll test it out again some time. Paleeshi might have a better understanding for Natural Healing than I do~ Maybe he can confirm this too

I’ll have to take it back it does give you a small regen too, however it seems to be quite wonky as it’s once every 3rd tick at most and sometimes not at all I can’t quite figure out why, it’s supposed to be in combat maybe it skips a tick if your pet gets stunned or something I’m not sure.

XD I’m not sure either. I just like to see numbers ticking lolol

I have tested Natural healing. It DOES affect the player as well. It heals for 133 base. It’s only affected by pet’s healing, which is a base of 0. However the Compassion Training in BM gives 350 Healing Power to your pet. This increase healing for player to 177 per tick. About once in 2-3 sec. If you don’t believe it, feel free to test yourself with a sparris in the mists Unless they changed it this patch though. I’ll have to check.

Edit: Yep, it still works as it did before. Bare in mind two things though. 1. Pet has to be in combat for it to work. 2. Your pet must be alive. But for some reason Compassion Training doesn’t seem to affect the the number on pet’s own heal – that is, it heals itself for 125 both with and without Compassion Training.

Holister.6394:

Hiya, I am a newish ranger and i’m keen to learn how this build has been working for you, it’s seems quite different and interesting versus the similar builds i have seen previously. Any chance of an update?

thanks

Uh, I actually went for an other build that I’m currently gearing my ranger for. It’s an all around build with high toughness, decent attack, crit and crit damage.
This is the final build: http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/ranger/?6|c.1p.0.g.1c.0|0.0.0.0.0.0|1n.7j.1n.7j.1n.7j.1n.7j.1n.7j.1n.a1|2u.0.2v.0.2s.0.1n.67.1n.67.2s.0|k68.f6.u67b.0.5|0.0|e
Here is the thread that describes it more closely, though the final gear set is in the first link: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/New-build-need-some-advice/first#post1499898

Reason for this was that I wanted a build that I could use in normal PvE, WvW and small scale WvW fights. So when I tried the signet build in sPvP I felt there were some things lacking and I started mixing with other utilities and traits.

Signet build was nice in the dungeons and is heavily focused on passive healing and pet survivability. The second build is more focused on survability and damage coming from you and isn’t as much pet focused. I felt that in the end the signets wouldn’t provide all the utilities I needed when going against players, but it works excellent in PvE though. I’m still using Signet of renewal.

Also an other reason why decided not to play this build is that although the pets get much better survivability, they will still die in certain situation, hence 30 points in BM felt a bit like a waste.

I feel it was a viable build but just not suited for certain situations, hence I decided to focus on other things.