Guild Wars 2

Before i get started i know ranger dps is lackluster. i dont want your reroll advice or qq’s about the dmg or comparisons to other classes dmg. i’m looking for any setups that you’ve really enjoyed/seen work well.

I just hit 80 a few days ago ankittenrying to figure out what to build for in dungeons. I was thinking about doing Knights armor (toughness/power/precision) Valk accessories (power/vit/crit dmg) and maybe zerkers weapons for more power/crit/crit dmg. Has anyone tried this already? it sounds like a good idea in my head. toughness/vit so i dont drop right away, everything has power on it, and the precision and crit dmg would work well together.
Or should i just stick with the carrion gear i got atm with a trap build while trying to flank with the SB?

Not at all as mad as you think. I’ve been using that type of armor setup since I hit 80 weeks ago. My armor pieces are 2 x Rampagers, 1 x Valk, 3 x Zerkers with accessories being 3 x Valk, 1 x Knight and 2x Zerk (incl back piece).

The build I use is a crit-centric beastmastery build. 30 skirm, 5 WS, 15NM & 20BM traiting to add boons, bleeding on hit and high crits to my pet. It leaves me with a high chance to crit & over 18k health. I’ve taken this build into all of the dungeons, using dps pets, and it performs very well.

The DPS is about average for a ranger and ofc relies of a degree of pet management as it will be providing a large amount of your overall dmg. I personally have attack and return mapped to my mouse side buttons with my heal mapped to middle mouse, this helps keep your pet in the fight a lot longer before switching. Before the SB nerf I would consistantly pull aggro off other classes with this build, less so now.

The survivability is top notch and I more often than not find myself picking up my teammates in the case of an almost wipe. If you pack Spirit of Nature and Healing Spring this build and setup is tough enough to run through AoE/mobs and drop emergency healing/revive whilst still keeping up decent dps pressure with the pet. Fantastic for fractals.

Anyway, give it a shot, you won’t regret it.

There’s no magic number for how much you need of certain stats, particularly with defensive stats since it depends on your build. I.e. someone running a glass cannon build will want some tough/vit on gear, but not as much as someone running with more defensive traits/stats.

As for choosing which offensive stats, power is a pretty safe choice whenever you can choose it since condition damage will depend on your build (which will probably change more frequently than you can change your gear).

If you’re running a trap build, then I would suggest staying with your carrion gear, but consider supplementing some pieces with some Power/Tough/Vit as needed.

In the end, use your own experience to decide whether you need more defense on your gear or not. Are you wiping in dungeons a lot? If so, is it from taking too much damage or from not killing a boss fast enough. In my experience, surviving a fight is more important than trying to burn through it quickly. You don’t want to spend forever fighting a boss, but very few fights really require a dps race and of course, you deal no dps when you’re dead.