Guild Wars 2

Okay, so here it is. I’m playing GW2 for the first time in 2 years and understand a lot has changed. I made up a new class, and I’m starting over from scratch with little knowledge of the game. What I’m looking for here is a little guidance.

Currently, I’m level 25

Weapons and playstyle (leveling)-
I really enjoy running Shortbow primary, and Sword(or Axe)/Torch secondary, swapping back and forth as needed to keep poison/bleed/burning up on foes while maintaining my mobility. I like Axe/Sword better, but started experimenting with sword recently. I dislike that it’s basically just spamming auto-attack, due to a lack of options that keep you engaged with your foe. Time will tell how that pans out I guess.

Given this, what kind of build am I looking at? Seems like Wilderness Survival/Skirmishing. Should I be stacking con/precision/power? I feel kind of at a loss. All the guides say LB/GS or LB/SwordAxe etc so they’re not much help to me in that respect. I’m not looking to optimize raid DPS or anything, because I’m obviously still leveling here and often solo.

Well with the weapons you’ve grown to like you’re looking at Trapper or Condition Survival builds for the most part.

What you’re seeing in guides saying LB + GS or LB + Sw/Axe is probably this
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Ranger_-_S/A_LB_Spotter

The thing with dungeons is that power builds are often preferred. For open world PvE you can play whatever you want. In PvP/WvW however this is often not the case until you hit large scale combat in WvW.

If you’re talking just dungeons in PvE however I think you’re not going to find much success in SB + Sword/Torch.

you’ll probably want hybrid stats like rampager, sinister, or carrion. a few pieces of celestial can be used to round off certain stats

i’m thinking something like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAV3fjEq0yaBLmsw1ag8gadAEBnezjYbZuBnQBrmA-TJhHwACeCAB3fAwFBoZZAA

note that rampagers does not give vit outside of spvp, it’s precision main/power+condition minor