Guild Wars 2

So i’ve been class hopping recently after retiring my crithammer guardian and i’ve finally come around to trying a ranged class( previously i’ve tried engi, warrior and a dash of mesmer) now i have seen the issues with ranger and i’ll be honest, i dun feel it because i have never played it before so i have no feelings about the state of rangers whatsoever.
Hence i come with a completely blank neutral view on the class and i would wanna try it and i just want to know that at the state ranger is in, what are the more viable weapons and build types for someone who is gonna mainly Pve and W3( i will mostly ignore pvp).
For PvE i guess i would like to do the standard world roaming doing hearts and DEs and dungeons at the later stages
oh and if you guys could suggest suitable pets it would be awesome too

im not so great at wvw, but i got some pve advice.

- if you want to use the 1h sword, make sure to turn the auto-attack off. the way this swords basic attack works is that you use one melee attack, then you use a leap, and then another leap. this was intended to be a melee weapon that chases down opponents. however, when in melee range and your opponent is not running away, the sword attacks all queue up and it makes it so you can’t dodge or use other skills, binding yourself in place.

- use any pet you like really, i like having a spider (the one that imobilizes, cant remember name) and a wolf for the cc, but really anything works.

- avoid the spirit utility skills right now, they are very underpowered

- using ranged traps can be quite fun, traps in general are great for the combo fields they make.

- keybind the about-face key somewhere if you want to use lightning reflexes or want to do some crazy acrobatics with the 1h sword’s 3rd skill.

- quickening zephyr and the shortbow in nice for attacking an opponent from behind, you can stack alot of bleeds in a very short time.

- remember as a ranger your main way to avoid damage is to dodge, remember the skills that do this and i suggest traiting into getting increased endurance

- traiting into piercing arrows can do alot of damage in tightly packed enemies

- i can’t speak for all the classes, but i really like the asura attack animations with the swords

im no pro, so take somebody elses advice over mine, enjoy your ranger

If i were you i would use Shortbow as main weapon and sword/horn secondary (mainly for the speed buff which helps a lot going from place to place).

For traits/skills, that’s more a matter of taste, but i’d use full BM traits first until you get your second traits unlocked. Pets are awesome for PvE and will most likely do more damage than you and also tank for the most part. I would even use full BM/Skirmishing spec for leveling because you won’t have that much damage by yourself until you get some decent amount of stats in your gear and your pet will be scary
If you are not that much into the pet then go Markmanship first and add choose the 10% damage increase with full endurance when you have 10 points on and unlock piercing arrows when you reach 20 points.
I also like 10 points into Wilderness Survival to get the 50% damage reduction from failing, it’s great to not having to worry about jumping from somewhere or making a mistake trying to do a puzzle/vista.

As skills goes, for healing i’d take Healing Spring, its condition removal is a must have, because many times you have poison and the other heals won’t be as effective.
For the rest of skills it’s a matter of choice, i like signets for leveling, Signet of the Wild is awesome for its passive health regeneration in combat, helps you and your pet to stay alive. Signet of the Hunt is also great for the 10% running speed, leveling involves a lot of running, and the third slot is more optional, i’d use Quickening Zephyr for some burst damage (don’t use it with Shortbow, switch to sword and use QZ, it’s better unless you can’t stay in melee during 4-5 seconds) every now and then or Signet of the Stone to make your pet last longer against tough fights like killing a champion monster.

Pets, i’d take 2 bears and 2 cats if possible, any bear and jaguar/any other feline. Bears mainly for tanky situations, you switch pets before killing for example a veteran monster or skill point monster, and Felines for everything else…they have the most dps in my opinion.

That’s mostly for solo leveling and completing maps, if what you want is event farm then you would have to spec into Skirmishing Trapper and Markmanship piercing arrows.

For PvP in WvW, Longbow and Sword/Horn, mainly for barrage and long range, but by the time you are 80 you should know what spec fits you best.

shrug I use longbow because I prefere its skillset and skins but honestly all ranger weapons kinda suck atm except for shortbow and 1h sword. The offhands are fine so its more about flavor and less about effectiveness. Pets are also preference, do you prefere a heavily defensive or offensive pet? Melee or ranged pet? Does CC matter or do you just wanna blow stuff up? For each Id suggest jaguar and raven for dps, they are amazing offensively, both hit hella hard and jag gains 25% crit damage when he stealths. For defensive Id say bear, or anything of the bear family, support Ive heard moas are good, for balanced pets with CC + medium damage Id go with dogs, wolves, fernhound, drakehound ect…

Its more about playstyle in pve, before I stopped lvling my ranger due to being annoyingly weak I was rolling with a wolf and a stalker, the stalker was used to give me 5 stacks of might really but the wolf was great for keeping mobs off me with his aoe fear. Now I use the raven for its f2 ability and the fact that birds compliment longbows quite well, and jaguar because its raw damage and stealth ability.

Ranger weak at leveling? First time i read that

It’s a class that can solo really well, pets are really strong for leveling. Shortbow + Pet traits (30% pet crit damage, pet heals on crits, etc) and you will barely need to heal your pet, normal mobs go mostly after your pet until really later on. It can solo through anything during leveling, absolutely zero problems soloing veteran mobs or skill points.

It can even get boring for rangers to be that easy…tab>1 while you watch a movie even on higher level mobs.

Not quite, yes having a pet to hold the agro is nice on 1 mob but when you arent using a tanky pet and you get more than 1 mob which is generally the case since pets like to agro everything in sight, they tend to die extremely fast. I dont wanna be forced to use a bear or some tanky mob, I wanna use my jaguar or raven, and you are right, rangers can solo pretty well but like i said, 1 mob. I control my pet well, I call him back when he is close to death, CC the enemy till heal is up, then send pet back in, that gets boring. I dont want my pet almost dying too 2 mobs, I want him to have more survivability, enough to withstand a few hits.

Ive semi soloed a champ before, a champ wasp queen and her champ wasp partner in ebonhawk, was epic and since ranger was the only class I did it on with the help of a engineer we made it a 2v2 and won, it was good times. But my pet was literally dead most of the time, and I was able to self rez him so I would sit back and rez while engineer distracted, and pet would die in 1 hit…again. Gets frustrating having such long cds on pet swaps and having pet die so easily.

Try switching the pet BEFORE it dies, with BM mastery it was like 15 seconds cooldown, that’s more than enough for a tanky pet to survive, coupled with some tricks like putting it on passive and kiting if you need a few more seconds…the mob will still chase the pet and meanwhile you hit them.

Spec into BM and pet won’t die to 2-3 mobs… i mostly used felines while leveling and never had a problem with pets dying, except against certain bosses from events or 5+ mobs but that’s pretty normal. Also if you tend to aggro many mobs just switch to a bear, ranger has the tools…if some people don’t wanna use them it’s not ranger’s fault.

If you think ranger is weak for leveling, then don’t ever make a mesmer or something like that because that’s truly weak at lower levels, I’ve tried warrior, guardian and mesmer and all of them have a harder time soloing maps than ranger, with a ranger it’s just easy mode. And btw Warrior and Guardian are quite nice for soloing maps aswell, but Ranger is 10x safer and easier in most scenarios.

Rangers are great.

You get to control your engagement range and conditions in WvW (unless it a thief) and in PvE you can take on several enemies at once with relative ease. Currently I use my ranger in Orr and I can take on up to 7 enemies with relative ease.

Rangers do fine you just have to like the playstyle.

In pve sure, rangers can get by, but in pvp it doesnt work that way. And sleepy, I just said I switch my pet out alot, doesnt change the fact that when my pet agros 2+ mobs Im forced to run or attempt to kill them because my pet dies too fast even with me calling him back then switching him out. I shouldnt have to worry about my pet dying faster than me. And in pvp its a joke, pet runs in, gets hit by a random aoe, dies, too fast for me to pull him out. I swap pets, bam 50 sec cd, send pet in, a random aoe hits him also and dead again, now im stranded without a pet, doing little damage.

I wouldn’t worry about it for PvE. The Ranger is still the best PvE profession, simply because of the pet. I only ever get defeated when I’m downed, if I get damaged by three or more mobs at the same time. Other then that I can always rally myself thanks to the pet healing me. The pet is also the perfect decoy for mobs, meaning you can farm nodes or open chests, while the pet is fighting the mob on its own. Then run away, and call the pet back. I beat a champion mob alone by myself yesterday, simply by changing pets all the time, and rallying myself while the pet was fighting. You just can’t lose with the pet.

If you are just playing PvE, then play with whatever pet you think looks cool. In dungeons I only play with bears, simply because mobs love to attack pets, and bears are the best survivors. In Worlds PvP it’s a good idea to go with a bird and the Jaguar, because they can go past enemy lines. The bird is small, so no one will really attack it unless they are being attacked themselves, and the Jaguar can go into stealth for five seconds while dealing 100% critical damage. It’s always fun to stand on a high place, and just watch your pet chasing a player.

Dante, the OP doesn’t really care about sPvP/tPvP, and pets are not that important in WvW, if you solo roam pets will still be useful sometimes tho, i mostly take advantage of them when i’m downed and someone tries to finish me off, dog type pets are simply the best for that.

True fact is that for leveling pets= semigods, every 15 seconds pet on full HP coupled with your heal, no reason for a pet to die, what other class has like a second character that can heal itself every 15 seconds, regen HP in combat with Sigil of the Wild and heals doing critical hits while at the same time you can heal it with your own heal?

My recommendation: pick whichever bow you like more, then pick 1h sword + any offhand except dagger. Axe, torch, and horn all work nicely but differently and are fun to use. To keep things interesting I often go full melee: 1h sword/axe + greatsword. Our evasion makes smart melee completely viable.

Have fun with pets. Try em all (especially the porcine family, they’re my fav). And swap em often. Every 15-20 seconds you get a pet with full health and (if traited do this) quickness.

Firstly, thanks for all the replies, its nice to see all these constructive suggestion when i first made this topic i was afraid some…. kittens will come in and tell me the pros of all the other classes and tell me to leave ranger alone :P
So far from all the posts i see that sword is the most favoured main hand with warhorn being the more favoured off hand, my question about this is why? sword is melee and offers loads of jumping into fights but can a ranger survive that? i mean sure 2 and 3 are evades but to use the sword right u gotta be in melee range and yeah i’m kinda worried about survival. And hence a sub question is why is axe so…. not in favour?(additional info: i’m going longbow cuz i like its skills better :P)

As for builds the one that most interests me is trapper, with the traits you can toss traps like a ranged aoe which seems awesome when dealing with DEs and possibly zerks in W3 so that kinda locks in the tier 2 and 3 skirmishing traits so i’m caught between going for pets stuff(BM),bow stuff (marksmenship) or wilderness stuff to reduce cd of survival and warhorn skills (i guess i want entangle and QZ to go with 2 traps, most likely fire and spike),any advice from experienced trappers?

And finally pets, from what i see different pets suit different times of playing, so i get that normal world roaming would see any pet doing well but different pets do different things and W3 i see the sense of jaguar and birds(ravens seem the best for this since they are tiny,black and debuff) so my issue is with dungeons and i guess world bosses in pve. From posts in this topic and others i see 2 camps, the double bear group and the ranged pet group, question is why dun just mix the 2 and use 1 bear(brown i guess) and 1 ranged( spider seems to be better)?

oh and a final technical question, the bm line adds +1 to each of pet attribute per trait point right? so if u max bm you only add 30 to all your pet’s attribute? seems kinda…. weak since wiki says pets get 1-2k stats( with bear having 4k in vit) at lvl 80

Sword is good, but it’s not a primary weapon. Since the Shortbow nerf QZ is not ideal for SB, therefor switching to sword to use QZ and kill a mob or two quickly is great, you won’t have any problem taking a couple of hits from normal monsters. Second skill from sword can be used to evade and also to leap, if you use it backwards and turn around your camera canceling your target to leap afterwards you will find yourself having a pretty solid weapon that can be used to escape quite well if needed.

Axe is ranged and does “little” damage compared to the majority of weapons, Axe offhand is also great because the last skill makes decent amount of damage and reflects projectiles but horn buff is simply too useful.

For a decent trapper build you need the trait that allows you to throw traps which makes them larger (20 points into skirmishing).
It simply depends on how you want to level up, BM is probably the “safest and fastest” but not very fun, traps are very good but they are more of a build to be made when you have proper gear in my opinion.

Ranged pets damage is “low” and they are weak (except devourers, they are very tanky), and birds flaw is they give celerity before they attack (a buff not really needed to kill mobs) and lose a second or two before they start attacking.
Using a bear + a damage dealer pet is good, in fact that’s what i mostly did while leveling, using a feline as main pet and bear situational when i needed a tank. But the reason behind using 2 same pets is also that having BM traits you gain quickness for 2 seconds everytime you swap your pets which is quite convenient.

Either way, the build you use it’s up to you and your style, for leveling anything will work as a ranger, pet is still strong without traits.

i like the sword in pve because it keeps it interesting, i used longbow up to around lvl 50, its good, just gets boring eventually. i could be wrong, but it feels that the 1h sword does the most damage on its basic attack, it also has a great ability to disengage from the enemy if you do start taking damage

oh, i forgot to mention that the 1h sword cripples the enemy on auto attack, making it even easier to disengage

I love the torch offhand even though I rarely see anyone mention it on the forums. I can pull 4-5 mobs with my bow, then switch to axe/torch., drop healing spring, bonfire, throw the torch, throw the axe, drop the tangle vines and jump clear. Dance while everyone gets choked/burned to death.

I often wonder if I am missing something because no one ever seems to mention the huge aoe damage we can do with entangling vines/bonfire…

I don’t pvp, but in pve I use a Murellow to tank (aoe posion, self regen) and swap to a Lynx (for solo, or when the murellow dies). Underwater I use the Shark, and Armor Fish (as backup).

Weapons I use, short bow and axe/axe. Love the Ranger, I can take on a lot of mobs, and kit the kitten out of them!

I did use axe/torch…setting fire is fun! And entangle is great! Set 2 traps, Murellow aoe poison, entangle…watch the health drop.

So sleepy, you are saying your pet never dies in pve? Ever? Im not buying it, but either way idc about pve in a pvp game. In pvp pets are bad, so Im looking forward to any buffs/fixes they might get next patch.

Leveling? Quite rarely, it can die sometimes, but dying to two normal mobs as you said? Hell no.
In PvP pets have their uses, i wouldn’t say bad, but they need some rework for stuff like pets staying with you when you are in certain spots and some of their skills should cast faster.
You should adapt your pet to different situations, a dead pet is useless so there is no reason to say “i don’t want a tanky pet but i’m gonna keep sending my weak pet to multiple mobs”, it’s like saying i want to attack from range but i’m going to use my fists.

A good way of having your pet always alive is using a good damage dealer as main pet and the most tanky pet as secondary…that way when your squishy pet is about to die you swap to bear and if your bear is tanky enough to wait 15-20 seconds.

2 Normal mobs depends on their damage really. I have had some normal mobs hit my pet pretty kitten hard, like I said, I can generally handle 2 mobs with a non tank pet but it doesnt change the fact pets are too squishy. I wont even bring up dungeons, farming them on my ranger taught me to just bring buff pets in and keep them on passive.

In pvp, no, pets suck for many reasons, they die farrrr to easily and quickly, they are slow to respond, animations kinda screw you sometimes, the long pet swap cd sucks, some of the CC skills are broken. There are alot of reasons they are bad, sure they can be useful at times, but at times vs most of the time or all the time are the difference between a ranger and any other class. Buff the survivability, fix bugs, and buff the ranger himself and add/remove/fix the traits and its gg.

You even said yourself you stopped leveling your ranger….which makes me think you didn’t really do many dungeons, pets are not bad, people simply don’t know and don’t wanna know how to use them.

Their major flaw is they can’t hit targets that keep running (not entirely true, there are ranged pets for a reason) , they die “easily” to AoE damage, yes…a few places will one shot your pet….but very few to even dare to say pets are useless. Their F2 and other skills have too long casting time, but that’s pretty much it.
I have no problem with them in the majority of dungeons…pets die, but so does people, no one else noticed some people also die from AoE?

People really shouldn’t base their conclusions on what they “hear”, because you know…then everyone would be playing thief/warrior

I believe some people really expects too much from a Ranger, get real, whatever changes they make it’s just gonna be sightly better than it currently is in some aspects, they aren’t gonna turn ranger into a demigod or a tanky killing machine.

I stopped lvling ranger at 65, I did plenty of dungeons inbetween that, atleast 4 and I farmed them over and over for xp. So I have plenty of xp on ranger in both pve and pvp. Im not talking out of my kitten and I dont want ranger ot be a demi god, but for pvp I want them to be viable in more than 1 build, and even that 1 build is apparently underpreforming. So yea, thousands of players cant be of like mind and be wrong. Casual players just wont ever understand.

ok before this escalates, everyone chill with the pvp thing, i kinda expected this to happen if pvp came into the picture so i requested to ignore pvp. i am new to ranger but i did have a guardian so i have seen rangers do well and not so well in pvp with or without pets.

so back to the topic, i have seen suggestions of torch but i guess my building to be a trapper would not really see it as the better offhand due to the availability of fire trap which i feel is the most damaging trap among the 4 so yeah torch is good but with fire trap having lower cd(i think half if traited) and that burning dosent stack intensity i guess the benefit of warhorn outweighs torch in a trapper build.

As for the mainhand…. i’m still swapping between sword and axe as the playstyles of both interest me but i admit sword is better in terms of dmg to single targets however if my bear manages to draw 2 mobs or more i feel axe starts to perform simply due to the bouncing effect, combine with a fire field due to fire trap and axe really shines so yeah… i’m still stuck :P

for pve dont forget about axe offhand, in pvp it isn’t very good, but in pve it does alot of damage and reacts to the combo fields you get from the traps.

Remember sword doesn’t hit just one target, so axe is not really that good if you pull two mobs either. Torch fits well to a trapper ranger because considering you build into trapper i guess you would use condition gear. Only reason to use horn is to have buff speed every now and then, leveling and completing maps is all about running from point A to point B, so if you don’t care that much about that use torch or whatever weapon fits you best.

Hi

I 80 my ranger a while ago and am still learning , I read everything and have tried loads of builds suggested by people here , in wiki/guru and from vids, very surprised people on the forum have not come to more of a consensus regarding class builds as you find in other games.

Sadly many suggested by people on forums are not that useful , best to try find someone with a track record and as I am sure you know a good PVPer build will work anywhere.

What I have gleaned., I am still learning
1. When not using bow switch Axe (hits multiple targets on auto, collect those badges) / Warhorn (for the excellent fury/might/swiftness and birds) fire off call of the wild and switch back to bow and use quickening zephyr for excellent burst.
2. Away from Keeps WvW Short bow, PvP Short Bow , PvE in Keep or attacking Keep Longbow.
3. PvP/WvW non ranged pets don’t hit very often so spiders as they hit ranged (and parlyze and/or dogs/wolfs for F2 Fear/Chill
4. 30 points Wilderness , toughness and very very good ,shared anguish and hide in plain sight
5. Lightning reflkxes (vigor endurance dodge, dodge dodge !), Protect me, quickening zephyr, Fury or Entangle
6. Put sigil of enegry on your axe and warhorn for more endurance when you switch for more dodge, dodge and dodge again.

Not got it totally sorted but this is my build
My armour is Exotic with Power, Presc, Toughness. Jewelery is Power, Vitality, Crit Damage, Bow sigils accuracy crit chance, Horn/axe sigils both energy.
Build 5, 20, 30, 10,5. Pet prowess, Honed axe, shared anguish !, Oakheart,Hide in plain Sight !, Natures Protection,

With Call of the wild I have 63% crit, switching to bow and using quickening zephyr (with rapid fire if long bow too) gives really not bad burst and the build is quite durable.

Please post if anybody knows better , but this is quite durable for top end PvE and WvW and does enough damage to solo nearly everything PvE and enough damage to kill other players in WvW.

All the best

Random.1593:

Hi

I 80 my ranger a while ago and am still learning , I read everything and have tried loads of builds suggested by people here , in wiki/guru and from vids, very surprised people on the forum have not come to more of a consensus regarding class builds as you find in other games.

Sadly many suggested by people on forums are not that useful , best to try find someone with a track record and as I am sure you know a good PVPer build will work anywhere.

What I have gleaned., I am still learning
1. When not using bow switch Axe (hits multiple targets on auto, collect those badges) / Warhorn (for the excellent fury/might/swiftness and birds) fire off call of the wild and switch back to bow and use quickening zephyr for excellent burst.
2. Away from Keeps WvW Short bow, PvP Short Bow , PvE in Keep or attacking Keep Longbow.
3. PvP/WvW non ranged pets don’t hit very often so spiders as they hit ranged (and parlyze and/or dogs/wolfs for F2 Fear/Chill
4. 30 points Wilderness , toughness and very very good ,shared anguish and hide in plain sight
5. Lightning reflkxes (vigor endurance dodge, dodge dodge !), Protect me, quickening zephyr, Fury or Entangle
6. Put sigil of enegry on your axe and warhorn for more endurance when you switch for more dodge, dodge and dodge again.

Not got it totally sorted but this is my build
My armour is Exotic with Power, Presc, Toughness. Jewelery is Power, Vitality, Crit Damage, Bow sigils accuracy crit chance, Horn/axe sigils both energy.
Build 5, 20, 30, 10,5. Pet prowess, Honed axe, shared anguish !, Oakheart,Hide in plain Sight !, Natures Protection,

With Call of the wild I have 63% crit, switching to bow and using quickening zephyr (with rapid fire if long bow too) gives really not bad burst and the build is quite durable.

Please post if anybody knows better , but this is quite durable for top end PvE and WvW and does enough damage to solo nearly everything PvE and enough damage to kill other players in WvW.

All the best

Idk about high end pve since I stopped ranger at 65, and I dont WvW…yet, but I agree, a good pvp build will work in pve also. I use some builds that you might like, they are all damage focused tho so pm me and I can give you the info, there is a condi build that is good and a dps build using longbow and now greatsword that is good for rangers. Ill gladly share if you are interested.

Whatever you do, don’t use the longbow, because trying that will suck out all the fun and you will delete your ranger real fast. The shortbow is the only weapon useful for leveling, so get a bear and get used to doing nothing but watching your ranger auto attack.

Crossfire (shortbow auto attack) is the only ranger skill you’ll use 99% of the time, as none of the other weapons are viable for leveling (or pvp), and shortbow doesn’t have any other skills you use in pve.

So yeah, you can get to lvl80 eventually, but it’ll be exceedingly boring.. as all you ever do the entire time, is shortbow auto attack. The devs tried to “fix” that by downgrading the auto attack, but they forgot that none of the other skills are useful, so all that happened is that you do less damage (the nerf was about -30%) and spend even more time auto attacking.

Against multiple weak opponents you might sometimes try to use the axe, and then you end up doing the same, auto attacking and nothing else, as none of the other skills are useful for killing monsters, you just end up never using anything but auto attack as a ranger.

You can try having some fun with a greatsword and fire trap, and that works for like the first 15 levels, but then the damage gets so low that you just give up and either delete your ranger or go back to spamming crossfire.. pew pew pew times a million until lvl80.

Just horrible skill design combined with overnerfing, so sad because the concept of a ranger is great. The only people that play rangers, are the die-hard pet lovers, and newbies that accidentally picked the ranger because they didn’t know. Eventually everyone either deletes or shelves their ranger though, it’s the same with the elementalist profession. Luckily the other professions are not so horrible, so my advice is, play anything but ranger and elementalist.

Yea longbow does suck atm, I use it because I like the range/skills/aesthetics but it is inferior to shortbow in almost every way.

nice to see this thread keep going and even though i have settled on the trapper path its nice to see ppl posting other useful builds that would serve as a nice reference for others in the future so keep it up

well so far i’m lvl 18 and still purely running PvE and i like long bow mainly for 1 reason, barrage :P i dont even run around with the long bow out instead for normal mobs i just use sword/torch but when up against a veteran or champion or something i like to whip out the long bow out of combat, send my pet in, barrage and use that skill 3 that stack vulnerability then dash in with sword/torch skill 3, throw out 4,5 and toss in fire and poison traps, use sword 2 for the finisher then start 1 spam. now usually the vulnerability ends when i’m tossing out the traps but if i start close enough to the target( not stand at 1200 and start barrage) sometiimes it holds until i start 1 spam so yeah… its more of an opener weapon for me against big stuff
so i tried the various weapons and first was GS which i felt was cumbersome and attacks are slow so…. pass, then was axe which is….. lacking in alot of ways, the #3 is… i dunno.. chilled dosent really do anything since the mob is usually already standing still smacking my pet, #2 dmg is crazy low and at my lvl the bleeds are….well lets just say they are completely outdone by my burning and 1….. sometimes the bloody thing dosent bounce right, i mean if theres just 2 mobs sometimes it will bounce between them, sometimes it hit (a) then (b) then stops and worst is sometimes it hits (a) then for some reason bounces to my pet?!?!?! and stops so yeah i dun like it compared to sword and as for warhorn, it may be good for party are zerks but for solo levelling, meh :P i like torch better now, even though ppl say its great for running across maps but i’m the kind of person who stops at every resource node i see so….yeah swiftness is kinda wasted on me :P but i will not completely refute the above weapons cuz i know they are useful for different stuff but for solo leveling, sword/torch works best for me
so anyway now that i’m reaching lvl 20 and i[m wondering whats the first trait to get in skirmishing since i decided to start with that line to get the most out of the early precision boost, i’m stuck between the pet boosters and the crit boosters, any suggestions ?

Well traps have their own issues, they will probably be adjusted too. Here is how I see ranger, the hunter, who shoots with a bow to hunt his prety, the trapper who sets traps for his prey and waits for them to fall into them, the beast master…self explained, the druid, ranger tuned into nature and the anctient druidic spirits, the skirmisher, basically drizzt from dark elf trilogy. And the scout sniper, guy who moves swiftly and scouts ahead for his team, and can lay the hurt on from maximum range. I want the last.

If you really want to go ranger, go ranger. But don’t say we didn’t warn you when it stops beeing fun.

Spoiler: It stops beeing fun.

I’d suggest not bothering until the class gets its buff. It is just not fun and cannot compete in the state it’s in.

With PvP off the table, you’ll be fine.

I leveled all the way to level 80 using nothnig but a longbow with a Lynx and Arcdotus as pets and I had a wonderful time.

kitai, get the 30% critical damage for pets trait, imo it’s a must have and yeah, horn purpose is mainly to spend less time running overall, torch is fine for killing if you are using sword as main weapon, axe is good as offhand tho.

I’m using both shortbow and longbow, owl/fern hound/shark as pets. It may not be the smartest combo or nowhere near the best, but I really like playing this way in pve and wvw. I get facerolled pretty badly if I’m not paying enough attention what’s happening around me but still I wouldn’t pick any other class. It’s been an adventure that I truly enjoyed, and that’s why we are playing this game, right?