Guild Wars 2

Hands down, rangers have the best sustained DPS in the game, especially if you let them free cast. They’re like the arcane mages of GW2, if you let them sit back and choose targets during a fight, they will totally tear your team up in no time if you’re running a glass cannon build.

THE BUILD:

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.6.9.10.0.0.32.21.0.0.133.145.134.135.151.2.2.36.376.381.383.396.398.401.0.0.0.0.0.0.441.0.0.30.30.0.0.10

Critique as you will!

WEAPONS

• Long Bow – Most people don’t like this weapon because of the poor auto attack, but the auto attack is the only bad thing about it!  Rapid fire is very high damage especially with quickness, 10% more damage from vulnerability in 1 shot is amazing, knock back/stun is great for nodes or people focusing you, and the AoE is an AMAZING damage dealer to groups, not to mention the crippling effect which greatly helps your team clean up.

• Short Bow – taken for obvious reasons, auto attack has very high damage with this build and will be your main damage dealer, cone poison is great to lower healing, gives another evade, has a cripple which helps your melee team mates, as well as you to focus, and the daze/stun is also great.

• Sword and great sword are good, but frankly just do what other classes can do MUCH better (thief and warrior).  Axe is a good weapon for group combat, but has VERY little flexibility, especially when compared to the Long Bow.  Stick with the bows for sure.

PETS

• Wolf – obvious reasons, the fear and knock down are amazing

• Hyena – considered a dog pet so still has a knock down, and the f2 ability summons another hyena as well. MY theory on this is that the more nameplates that appear on an enemy screen, the more worried they get (see mesmers). And having 2 pets on your target can cause them to make some mistakes which let you sit back and blast away at them.

BUILD REASONING:

• Hydromancy sigil – is good in tight spots, and goes well if you follow up with a knock back from LB #4.

• The earth sigil – for more bleeds, but with such a high crit chance could be swapped for strength on the SB.

• Healing spring – must for team work, condition removal is a godsend.

• Quickening Zephyr – obvious reason, use when entering combat and target is at long range

• Traps – The bread and butter. Combo field, slow, bleed, and burn all with 2 abilities. Get into a tight spot with your group and these can mean the difference between life and death, especially with blast finishers. I choose spike over frost because laying 2 combo fields over each other cancels out one of the fields and makes it useless. Stick with spike and fire for high damage and the slow.

• Steady Focus – amazing ability for those moments when you run up to a fight in progress and nobody is targeting you, or if you’re camping a node from afar and get a big jump on an enemy from 1200.

• Beastmasters Bond – pets go down a lot, might as well get up to 70% crit chance when it happens

• Piercing arrows – ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY for tournaments. Too many players clumped together/pets/illusions getting in the way not to have it. Take it, or lose a ton of DPS

• Agility Training – I can’t live without this trait. It helps pets do a significantly higher amount of damage just because they can stay closer to the target more easily.

• Trappers expertise/potency – buff your traps, you’ll need them

• Mighty Swap – either this or commanding voice are great, I like this for the greater damage on pets, especially when the swap gives you quickness.

• Amulet/runes – self explanatory

• Elite – RAO is great for the crit buff, gets you up to 70%. Entangle should be switched to if you see that the opposing team is melee heavy though.

PLAY STYLE:

You need to do 1 main thing when playing a ranger, because if we have aggro from a player you’re going to be worse in combat than most other classes. You need to keep yourself from being the center of attention. Running up on fights in progress is an amazing example.

1. I set up vuln with LB 3
2. pop QZ
3. LB 5 for AoE and cripple (amazing damage ability, roots help team focus targets too)
4. LB 2 for a focus target burn (this is when 1 enemy usually always goes down)
5. switch wep and pet for more quickness and switch target to any enemy standing
6. SB 4 for slow
7. SB auto attack till 2nd target dead

All of this happens in a manner of seconds, and it’s really amazing to behold. Most enemies won’t know you’re there until they’re all dead, at this time your surviving team mates can clean up and you can move onto another node to help/cap.

Try to find high ground so you can free cast (you will win every fight for your team if you are allowed to free cast), try to set up your traps in a fight at EVERY opportunity, and set up your traps BEFORE a fight, not after it’s started.

If you are going to 1v1 someone on a node, make sure you have some elevation/obstacle on them and you will win most of the time. In an open field, most 1v1s will end with you dying, do anything you can to extend that period of freecasting that you should have at the beginning of every fight. PICK YOUR FIGHTS.

That’s about it, once you get used to wep and pet swapping this becomes a very efficient build, and has made me love rangers again.

Please keep thread to constructive criticism, and I hope you all enjoy melting face in SPvP

I used to run a build very similar to this (see signature) but had a hard time against condition thieves and bunker guardians. Its excellent against every class except the ones I just mentioned. You have to always be on your toes also accepting the fact that you are very squishy.

I sought after a build that could counter condition thieves and bunker guardians in a 1vs1 or 1vs2 situation and think I have found it. Ill update my signature and link soon.

Hyena is bad, longbow is bad, agility training is bugged, take 5 points from beastmastery and put into wilderness survival (50% endurance is too good to not have), and i don’t see the point of going 30 points in marksmanship if you’re not taking the Signet of the Beastmaster.

That’s my opinion anyway.

Personally i find entangle is best against ranged enemies as melee ones can free themselves in a few auto-attacks before even realising they’ve been rooted at all.

Are traps really effective with 0 condition dmg?

@ AlexRD what’s wrong with agility training? i know it doesn’t stack with swiftness etc but didn’t know it was bugged in any way.

Btw i think Hyenas are underrated too, so long as you have an ally hyena out 100% of the time their dps will be ok, however the ally is squishy no matter how far you invest in BM which sucks, it should have the same stats as your hyena.

My one stun skill just killed you (not to mention the others I have). No decent team will let you sit back there firing arrows once they know you are the DPS.

@Wanderer
Agility training is bugged because it doesn’t give the full 30% speed bonus, only about 13%.

This build is pretty good for teamwork situations, but it will be hard to survive alone if you don’t do it right. Thieves will always be your downfall, unless they love to eat traps… yummy death. If you ever run into problems with warrior/guardian, you can easily control their approach with spike/freeze trap, while having them enjoy fire trap’s damage (yes you might want that high condition damage here buddy), just keep them at bay.

Eurantien.4632:

My one stun skill just killed you (not to mention the others I have). No decent team will let you sit back there firing arrows once they know you are the DPS.

And yet they do all the time. Every map has elevation to fire from, and if the your enemy is going to go down to 20% hp just getting to you, you’re going to take them out every time. You’re a ranger, not meant to be in the middle of the fray. You need to choose proper positioning to be a benefit to your team.

AlexRD.7914:

Hyena is bad, longbow is bad, agility training is bugged, take 5 points from beastmastery and put into wilderness survival (50% endurance is too good to not have), and i don’t see the point of going 30 points in marksmanship if you’re not taking the Signet of the Beastmaster.

That’s my opinion anyway.

The Hyena is my personal preference, I like adding another nameplate to the enemies screen, makes them act weird sometimes lol. Either way I would go with a dog pet because of their knock downs.

Piercing arrows in necessary, and whenever your pet gets to 25% (which happens all the time) your crit rate goes up to 70%, when your SB auto attack is critting from 1k-1.5k, fury becomes an absolute face melter.

Wanderer.5471:

Personally i find entangle is best against ranged enemies as melee ones can free themselves in a few auto-attacks before even realising they’ve been rooted at all.

Are traps really effective with 0 condition dmg?

Btw i think Hyenas are underrated too, so long as you have an ally hyena out 100% of the time their dps will be ok, however the ally is squishy no matter how far you invest in BM which sucks, it should have the same stats as your hyena.

The damage comes from your bows and pet, the spike trap is a great slow, and the fire trap is a great combo field for you (despite low cond damage) and especially your allies. I prefer RaO against ranged because I kill ranged faster than most ranged can kill me, and if they LOS me, they’re LOSing themselves too. The several seconds I get against melee with entangle is usually enough to get me an advantage to win.

awge.3852:

This build is pretty good for teamwork situations, but it will be hard to survive alone if you don’t do it right. Thieves will always be your downfall, unless they love to eat traps… yummy death. If you ever run into problems with warrior/guardian, you can easily control their approach with spike/freeze trap, while having them enjoy fire trap’s damage (yes you might want that high condition damage here buddy), just keep them at bay.

That’s why you need to make sure you do it right. 1v1 in the middle should always be avoided, it rarely helps everything. 1v1 while defending a node, you shouldn’t be on the node. Get to a good spot that’s slightly hidden, and preferably above the node (every node has a spot like this). 1v1 while attacking the node, again, approach it from elevation. Make them die just getting to you.

Glass thieves do eat this build up, but glass thieves eat every glass build up. I’m not sacrificing pure bow damage here for condition damage because the bow damage is too good. Traps play mind games on people and it’s great. When any enemy realizes that they just walked into 2 traps, they 80% of the time automatically go into defensive mode, either burning CDs or trying to LOS. Anything that gives you more firing time on the enemy is a good thing in my book. They’re also great for team work of course.

No Walking.6349:

And yet they do all the time. Every map has elevation to fire from, and if the your enemy is going to go down to 20% hp just getting to you, you’re going to take them out every time. You’re a ranger, not meant to be in the middle of the fray. You need to choose proper positioning to be a benefit to your team.

Thieves can stealth, Rangers have bows and pets to mess with you, mesmers have port, ele has rtl, warrior has blocks, guardian has blocks and ports, necro is most likely screwed, and engi’s can throw grenades and pull. The only map you will sit semi safely on is foefire and you are still very easy to get to. You are also not helping your team with stomps or rezzes once someone goes down. Also, the elevated position is going to make your piercing arrows only hit 1 target most of the time. You also cannot 1v1 and have no mobility. So you cannot help team fight, 1v1, or move. I think there are some problems here.

Sounds more like theorycrafting than practical experience to me, IME it’s difficult to stand still perched somewhere in spvp. I tried sniper-lb with various setups, but opponents close the gap too easily between gap closers, stuns, and pulls. Standing still in spvp usually means death anyway, the gw2 combat mechanics are built around mobility.

As an aside, you need 5 points in WS for the endurance regen. That’s pretty elemantary, even newer players should know that all ranger builds start from a 0/0/5/0/5. I’d suggest you rethink your choice of traits as well, as a sniper you really want 20% cooldown reduction for survival skills (QZ) and bow skills. Traps aren’t very effective without condition damage, I’d drop the trap traits and slot muddy terrain instead. Traited SoS is pretty much a must have for a GC in spvp, I’d slot MT, SoS, QZ, and entangle (or RaO for stability if you’re getting constantly yanked from your sniper nest).