Guild Wars 2

I’ve been doing WvW a lot lately, and I’ve been thinking of getting another set of armor for my ranger SPECIFICALLY for WvW. I was thinking of going glass cannon (power/precision/crit) with a longbow and increased range. What are your takes on this? Has anyone tried this build for strictly WvW?

Short answer;
Yes, tried it. Don’t.

Long answer;
Even with going all in damage and big numbers on the screen you are only really useful on keep/tower defences, and only if you aren’t around some red-circle-aggro-magnet-norn-elementalist.
The time you spend dodging out of circles and back in again you loose out on damage that could have been soaked with pow/vit/tou karma gear & wvsw legs.
Sure you loose a few % crit, but guess what? you run with 67% crit chance with zerker jewelry & weapon and the (more-or-less) constant fury buff up… even without fury; ~47%….
So instead of going all-in glass cannon that only really boosts your crit damage by 16% and giving you a silly amount of crit rating let’s check some alternatives.
I’m assuming full zerker exotic jewelry and a zerker exotic longbow with appropriate sigil aswell as runes for the followinging rant;

“temple armor”
power/vitality/toughness :
same damage output, lower critrate, higher health (3,5k), more toughness (420-430-ish.. less dmg from direct attacks, higher effective health).

precision/vitality/healing:
lower base damage (you don’t want that for “doing max dmg”), same critrate as glass cannon (ridiculously high), healing (that will most definetly keep you up)… I’d classify this as “poo” for WvsW longbow all-in dmg build (very good for other things mind you)

precision/toughness/condition damage;
You are using a longbow. Condition damage will only ever help your traited “chance on bleed on crit” and if you use some kind of DoT sigil…. along with lower damage, this is poo once again for WvsW.

Armor from crafting/Trading post;
Toughness/healing power/condition damage;
no power, got condition damge, this is a no-go aswell

power/vitality/condition damage;
two out of three aint bad, but condition damage makes this one a no-go

power/toughness/healing power;
interesting, atleast 3/3 useful stats.

power/precision/magic find;
magic find… yeah right… NEXT!

toughness/healing power/boon duration;
uhm… no power… next!

vitality/healing power/condition damage;
no. just no.

power/precision/toughness
mmm well… less damage taken vs. 16% crit damage? wish you could get crit dmg with toughness :/

I could go on, but you have a atleast two other options to go instead of pure berserker;

power/vit/toughness – keeps you alive long enough to kill people, sometimes you go out victorious in a 3vs1 fight
power/toughness/healing power – see previous, and your heals aren’t crapastic either!

your choice, do you opt for getting the biggest numbers on the screen for actually surviving long enough to make use of the full duration of lightning reflexes & pet switch? … dead ppl loose on the dps-meter

And if you are set in stone for “screw it, I’m going all in”… you are dead meat for anything that finds you out in the open and you will feel that you wasted a ton of materials on crafting those “good stuff”, and rest asure… you will not find it funny doing dungeons/fractals either :/

/rant off

TLDR: go with the standard P/V/T gear scattered in Orr and top off with WvsW pants.

Forgive my naivety, but what are the WvW pants?

Taruvoyant.4318:

Forgive my naivety, but what are the WvW pants?

WvW offers its own unique armor set (unique as in the skin) that needs badges, which you get from WvW. Its called Invaders set

As for Fiffelina’s recommendations, I definitely like pow/prec/tough thank you for that very lengthy suggestion

A glass cannon ranger will never be as good as a glass cannon anything else so it’s better to try to go balanced and combine Troll’s with decent Def/Vit so you don’t fold faster than Superman on laundry day.

If you’ve ever seen a backstab glass thief try to take on more than one enemy at a time you know what I mean.

A full zerker vs knight, how much crit damage will you lose if you chose to go with knight?
psst i will be rolling axe/warhorn and LG

You can use the same trait build: 30/30/5/0/5 as a glass cannon or as normal -granted you need to buy/craft the required sets but it can be done.

With 30/30/5/0/5 you can use SB or LB or even a GS! It will focus on Signets if you want it or not! Condition removal via a traited Signet or take LF and use a brown bear!

The build is so flexible and if you enjoy ‘Ranged’ your SB auto attacks will hit just as hard as pre nerf!!!

that the build i use and i kill most thing u jst got 2 look out for thifs m8 there like glass canons rangers lol but u kill most thing be4 there get 2 u

What runes would you socket in amour with Fiffelina’s power/toughness/healing power build? I assume something like Warrior or Wurm or Dolyak?

Taruvoyant: the “wvsw pants” I was referring to is the last missing part for getting full P/T/V armor, start with yellow for ~12k then switch to badges version if you can be bothered, the difference ain’t that big.

Ijakings: I’d go with something that ups your health a bit since you’d be getting healing power but no health pool to use it =)