Guild Wars 2

The following build is the one I currently run on my ranger, Yata the Outlaw. It has great survivability, with several sources of regeneration, combined with high Healing Power and Toughness. The damage dealt by this build is Power-based and consistent. You can get a decent burst out of it, if played well, but the damage is sufficient without it. The build focuses on keeping your enemy at a severe disadvantage by keeping them Chilled with your 5 sources of chill and some very long durations on a few of them.

Traits: 10/10/20/0/30

Marksmanship: II (Malicious Training) is an absolute must, as it drastically increases the duration of the Chill your pets will apply.

Skirmishing: I (Pet’s Prowess) is great for the extra damage. Both of your pets will crit high and often, taking full advantage of this trait.

Wilderness Survival: VI (Wilderness Knowledge) will reduce the recharge of two of your utilities. VII (Off Hand Training) works similarly for Off Hand weapon skills, which you will use two of.

Beast Mastery: V (Commanding Voice) Allows you to use your two main sources of Chill more often. VI (Mighty Swap) gives your pets a little extra damage when swapped, which is something you should be doing often. XI (Zephyr’s Speed) Works along with Might Swap. Switch your pet to line up a great burst to finish off foes.

Gear:

For armor, I use all Cleric’s, providing me with Power, Toughness, and Healing Power. I also take the Superior Rune of the Ice, but various other runes can be used instead.
The weapon sets I take are Axe/Warhorn and Sword/Dagger, all of which give me Power, Toughness and Healing Power. My Axe uses the Superior Sigil of Chilling, my Warhorn the Superior Sigil of Hydromancy. My Sword and Dagger use the Superior Sigil of Venom and the Superior Sigil of Energy, respectively. All of my trinkets are Clerics with Sapphire Jewels.

Utilities:

Troll Unguent is personally my favorite heal, and is what i recommend for this build. My first Utility is the Signet of the Wild, as the regeneration helps a lot with long-winded battles. I also take Muddy Terrain to force my foe into a preferable direction and/or keep them still. My last utility is Lightning Reflexes, as it makes me generally harder to pin down and kill. As for the Elite, I typically take Rampage As One, although Entangle works as well.

Pets:

I always run with my Owl and Snow Leopard. With Malicious Training, the chill they can apply is insanely long, and they are necessary for the build.

Using the Build

I always enter my battles with my Owl out, as the first thing it does is cast Swiftness; which is fine at the beginning, but not helpful mid-fight. I start with Hunter’s Call for funsies, and Winter’s Bite. I do that to give my Owl enough time to get close and land its Chill attack. When my Axe attacks are on cooldown, I move up nice and close. Swap to Sword/Dagger, swap pets (Pet gains might and you both gain quickness), follow up with my Snow Leopard’s chill attack, and hack away with the sword. Damage-wise, that’s all it ever takes to clean up most fights; switching back to Axe/Warhorn when necessary, and repeating the process. For the most part, the utilities are for survivability and stalling while your skills cooldown.

I have a blast playing this build, but I’m always looking to improve. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions, please let me know! Enjoy!

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQRBMRdG2IQVidjllFrlAZVAQaK4EzjV4QePil0TEv4qjqA-j0xA0HQCEMZAiOAkFLiGbJsIasqZioaA-w

What type of PvP content is this for? How well do you do when outnumbered? Your chill rotation seems to be mostly single-target, and you don’t seem to have much AoE in general.

can you post your build over here
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/ ?
i’m too lazy to reprodouce it -_-

Right, let me further explain myself:
I use this primarily for WvW, although it also works well for sPvP. You’re right in thakittens AoE is limited, but I tend to do very well against multiple enemies. It doesn’t win quickly, but I seem to be able to pummel one enemy down at a time, so I simply focus on what I perceive to be the biggest threat. The only real problem I find is the lack of condition removal, but you could always swap something for Signet of Renewal if you have to.

And yeah, I’ll do that right now.

Did a similar build, but one which relied on a frozen trap a bit more. You can easily get 25s of freeze on someone this way…

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-H;5FVy-p2ZDV-0;9F5D;1JTJ;006-35A39;5W-F75;1BmNX8DtZ20Fa1-g290;0Vq5rar5sas5t5230C-2i;9;9;9;9;9;9;1A-6s

It was actually very effective tbh.

I don’t see this build being effective at all in tpvp without condition removal. In wvw I can see this working due to the common builds there being mainly power based but in spvp/tpvp you will be hard pressed to survive against engies, necros, warriors, and other Rangers.

Chill is the #1 underestimated condition in the game I find.. and rangers can do it pretty well with their pets.

I tried a “chill ranger” for a short time on my trap ranger, traiting 10/30/30, using frost trap, arctic wolf and polar bear (which give longer AoE chills, on a longer cooldown than your pets).

Was a lot of fun, chill shuts people down so effectively. I didnt stick with it 100%, moved back to undead runes and also tend to use dual wolves, but still, quite a lot of chill knocking around and its fun

I completely agree with cufufalating about chill being underestimated. It’s essentially inverse time warp. Rangers have an unblockable pulsing chill in frost trap, making frost trap one of the best traps as opposed to the common notion of it being one of the worst. In fact, unless you are going into bleeds with runes/traits, I think frost trap should always be chosen over spike trap. The only time spike trap comes close is when you have trap potency and spike trap immobilizes on activation.

If you could get quickness into your build…just imagine quickness vs. a chilled foe. GG

While I have been relatively successful in tpvp, that’s to say I am not particularly good at it in general, so I could be talking out of my kitten there. I’ll be playing around more with using Frost Trap, but I found it too difficult to keep someone on me long enough to get my money’s worth from the trap.

Chopps, there is quite a bit of quickness when you swap pets. Zephyr’s Speed gives 3 seconds to you and your pet. I wait until I’m in melee range when I swap, so both my pet and myself can immediately start hacking away.

Zephyr’s speed is a grandmaster now pith. Patches! YOu have to read the notes.

yes it is, that’s why I have 30 in BM so I can have the quickness

The quickness on petswap is amazing for this build. I’ve been trying something similar since I read this thread and the results are awesome. You inspired me but I decided I wanted more condition damage and for my pets to take conditions from me with the 30 WS trait.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQRBHhx+1IQVldjliFrdAZVAQaPyEOBTePil0TEv4qjqA-TwAg2CrIESJkTIjQShsCNMYByWgpIA

Actually pulling 10 out of Skirmishing and plopping it into WS is a pretty good idea. Condition removal is the big weakness here. I’ll have to give that a try as well.