Guild Wars 2

Hello there dear ranger community.

I’ve been a big ranger/hunter/archer fan since forever. I’ve played them in almost every game. Now I am a PvPer/GvGer. So I run a a lot of guild raids in WvW focussing on open field fighting.

Now from especially in GvG in Guild Wars 2, Rangers have absolutely no place. In raids? About the same. Though I always keep theory crafting about rangers and I’ve come up with this build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vMAQNBjODbkRlOWLZxlFuWEErH5JQ9pVgTMF8nRuC+PlrslnqA-zECBojCykFQ0AAkIwpqFRjtEqIas6aYKXER1kCgJlRA-w

Now before I go into the traits let me explain the role of this build. WvW and raids are a lot about bombing and CC’ing the enemy inside them. I’ve made this build to CC enemies inside the bomb area for a successful bomb.

Now let’s take a look at the traits.

Marksmanship:
-Predator’s Instinct, a good form of CC combined with barrage on bomb area.
-Piercing Arrows, Do I need to explain this?
-Eagle Eye, Now this one is for increased longbow damage and range, which can be nice. However I’ve my doubts whether Remorseless or even spotter might be better, because after you’ve bombed and you are on cooldown. The ranger can go snipe a squishy for back line focus. Having Remorseless will keep vulnerability stacked on him because you (hopefully) killed/killing people in the bomb. Spotter will increase the precision of your other back line harassers. (Thoughts on this would be great)

Skirmishing:
-Primal Reflexes, For more vigor which a Ranger really needs. Combined with Lightning Reflexes and Natural Vigor, you will have great endurance regen.
-Quick Draw, for an increase in DPS on longbow.

Wilderness Survival:
-Wilderness Knowledge, Obvious choice here to reduce CD on your utilities. About signets. I don’t like them, they have a large CD and effects are minor even when fully traited.

Nature Magic:
Nature’s Protection, Very good trait to mitigate serious burst damage from whatever. (No one likes you thieves)

Now moving on to weapon sets and how to use them.

Longbow:
Obviously the longbow will be used to Barrage cc on bomb area. Also rapid fire can be used to damage in the bomb. However I prefer to work as a harasser and start sniping squishies ( Necro’s/Ele’s/Mesmers) or the opponents harasser squad and applying pressure to them by using my auto attacks from range, rapid fire.

Use your stealth to reposition yourself and get out of tough situations. Mastering this skill is important I think, because a ranger has little escapes/panic buttons.

Point blank shot can also be very powerful to save friendly squishies under attack from harrassers or yourself. Also great for holding chokes and pushing people of cliffs etc.

Axe/Warhorn:
I use this weapon set to harass even more, axe auto will hit decently and chill on them will also kitten them up. Warhorn 4 will apply more single target pressure aswell and the 5 skill will buff your allies.

Now I’ve debating about the off set and I know there are other options who can do their job well. I will go explain them a bit more.

Axe/Axe:
A huge favorite of mine, just because it looks brutal. But also the skills if used correctly are quite good. Path of scars will do serious damage when you are single target focusing someone and can also pull in 5 guys into your melee train for almost certain kills. Whirling Defense is a rare skill, a lot of people don’t like it because it’s stationary. However I would rarely use it offensively. I’d use it for regroups to reflect ranged damage and Whirl Finishers. It’s also great to cover a group of downed who are being ranged pressured so you can keep them safe.

Axe/Dagger:
The dagger will provide with another dodge which is always good to mitigate damage.
The cripple will improve your chasing power when single target focusing.

Now let’s move on to utilities.

Muddy Terrain:
This skill will go down first on bomb area to provide the initial immobilize and cripple and there will probably be more bombs so save this for those occasions.

Quickening Zephyr:
Either used to burst or to break stun and get the hell out of there. Remember your healing is reduced by 50% so do not heal while this is ticking.

Lightning Reflexes:
This is a skill you will need to master. This will save your life and keep your vigor up. Use it to roll through heavy damage or when getting bursted.

Rampage as One:
I’d use this after the bomb is finished so I can keep fury and swiftness up to chase targets. Also the stability is great for when u need to push through somewhere. So use this carefully. You will have perma fury with weapon swapping and swiftness from warhorn/allies. So don’t be afraid to just use this for the stability. Yes Entangle is kitten. Only a complete nobhead will get caught by it.

Last but not least! I’ll discuss a bit about the gear. In this area there is some space for you to be free in how you want it to be but I will give some pointers.

The gear:
I gear myself rather damaging but still have a decent HP pool and armor. Cavalier’s is a great set in my opinion because crit damage will still remain. Now I keep myself around 30% critical chance because with perma fury it will be 50 anyways.
Now I think this gear setup is on the edge of how far you can go damage wise. I wouldn’t go any further and actually I might probably go a bit more tanky. The damage you put out will still be fine and don’t forget you are focusing on CC as well.

For sigils I take Sigil of Hobbling on longbow for longer cripples. I thought about Sigil of Ice but it’s not AoE.

On axe have the superior sigil of Fire for a nice AoE damage proc.
War horn will have my stacking sigil (bloodlust) and later change warhorns for 1 with sigil of battle.

On to runes, I felt runes of Ice might be worth trying out since the damage modifier is pretty nice because you can proc it yourself on axe and in bombs there should be chill fields as well. However this is a weird pick I know that. Other runes that I think are viable are Runes of the Sanctuary, Runes of the Traveler and of course Runes of Melandru.

Of course there is other options hence I’m posting this. I would love to hear your opinions. Thanks for the read, hope u enjoyed it and I hope I didn’t forget anything.

*Note: this is a WvW build focused build, aimed at fights.