Guild Wars 2

hello fellow guild wars 2 players,
I’m gunna cut to the chase. I’m a level 80 female human ,here is my traits n skills (if link works) http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQFAVjIVF2BWSWs2Bgli9CspgTLZPOkxELxVWB. i got full teir3, berserker armor on, and beserker for my rings, ammy, and accessories. Now ive been told that is “glass cannon” and that is the best way to go for solo pve and dungeons and that is what i mainly play. i dont do pvp or wvw. but it just seems like I am dying not a lot more, but a little more than i normally was when i just threw something random together when i was new. if anyone at all can help me with armor stats, rings, ammy, accessories, traits (and what numerical numbers i need to put into) i would GREATLY appreciate it. thanks for you help. P.S. IF i were to keep my full zerker gear on my armor wep rings ammy and accesories would shortbow be a good idea

Personally, I prefer longbow for dungeons and open world pve, especially after the nerf to qz. Longbow has a bit more utility for increasing dps. Hunters shot is especially good as anyone who attacks the target will do 10% more dmg. I find shortbow to be a little bit better suited to pvp, where it lets you kite and keep up steady dmg.

As far as utilities, I personally prefer signet of the wild over signet of stone. Signet of stone only adds 35 toughness to the player, where as signet of wild will give you something like 62 health per second. Not a lot but nice. I’d also replace signet of the hunt when you fight. It’s great to have when traversing a map, but doesn’t do much for you when taking temples in orr. Protect me would work well with your bear, to soak dmg you’d other wise take. Lightning reflexes is excellent as well, as a stunbreaker, extra dodge roll, and vigor, which leads to more dodge rolls.

QZ has been nerfed but it’s still a dps boost.

As far as traits go, companions might will always be a waste of time. The might lasts 1 sec so you can’t exactly stack it on your pet let alone be sure that your pet will hit while buffed. I’d take primal reflexes or carnvorous appetite instead. One will give you more dodge rolls. The other gives your pet more sustain, which is nice.

It’s important to note also that surviving is as much about the build as it is about knowing the fights. If you know what attacks a dungeon boss has you can anticipate and avoid. If you know that there are going to be conditions you can equip more condition removal. If you know it’s ranged you can swap to a ranged pet.

Rangers, like all classes, will have to mix and match skills and traits at some point to do better at a certain fight/dungeon.

And yes, keep the zerker gear.

If you’re running berserker gear, I’d suggest balancing it with defensive signets like Lightning Reflexes, Signet of Renewal, Signet of the Wild, etc. You can keep your high dps that way while adding to your survivability.

I’d also suggest running pets like Fern Hound and Juvenile Wolf… the hound for it’s 10s regeneration (1300+ hp over time), and the wolf for it’s amazingly useful fear. You can swap to wolf while in downed state too and fear enemies away while it tries to heal you. Incredibly useful.

I forgot about food. Blackberry, Mixedberry and Omnomberry pies all give you health on crit, which provides a huge amount of sustain.

ok thank you all who have replied so far i will try these and see how they work, i like the idea of lighting reflex didnt think about it and the two signets. so were the traits ok or would you suggest moving them around more?

Even if you run berserker gear i would suggest investing into beastmastery or wilderness survival . Simply because the traits you get there are far superior to those in marksmanship .

I would move at least 15 points into beastmastery because the faster pet swap adds so much utility to you .

Also i find it that quickdraw is rather meh because bows already have short cooldowns , other then barrage . IMHO, the best traitlines are wilderness and beastmastery

ok if u suggest that what roman numerals should i put after i put 20 or 30 trait points into beastmastery or wilderness

so something like these traits? http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQFAVjIVV2JW+VsWCili9EomiM1f+hD9P0qSclVA

I would only take pet prowess in skirmishing tree if i was going full beastmaster build with cats or birds , otherwise there is no point imho . What could be interesting , if you insist on marksmanship is going 30 and getting the signet of the beastmaster , but that is still not really optimal at the moment as the power coefficients on ranger weapons are sub par compared to other classes .

I would just like to add this , first tell us what is the role and playstyle that you want , and then we can give you a proper suggestion

role and playstyle? i dont think i have a role i just run around solo in pve, and mainly do cof p1 farm but im slowly working on other dungeons. and playstyle i love my shortbow so i probably wont change that and for my secondary wep set that doesnt matter to me im currently useing great sword but if sword n warhorn are better then ill use that. i just would like to have an over all great shortbow ranger that i can play in both pve and dungeons with out have to switch armors like 100 different times lol i know it seems really hard and i know there are someplaces where u have to switch armors and change your build around but there has to be a certain “layout” just by using berserker armor stats n shortbow. if u would like why not set up and post a link and show me how u would build a ranger or how ur ranger is kinda set up, and then kinda explain why your is totally different from what i got or trying to get set up

Control? Group Support/Protection? Damage? Direct or Condition?

probably mainly damage. why does that change things?

NOTE: When I give advice for dungeons, it’s with high level fractals in mind as I see the other dungeons as so easy it doesn’t really matter.

For damage in berserker gear for PvE, I would recommend the longbow. It does allow Rangers to sort of cheat the content at time as you shoot from 1,500 range. It’s the easiest way to play class cannon and the longbow does great damage from range.

If doing that, I’d suggest piercing arrows as well, so you’re going to need at least 30 in Marksmanship for those 2 traits.

For off-hand, that’s up to you. shortbow will give you another long range weapon (1,200), axe will give some control (chill + weakness), condition damage (meh w/ berserker and you need to be close for it to be good), and bouncing attacks from 900 range and give you access to our many sweet offhands while not forcing you to be in melee range.

I don’t suggest going greatsword or sword with full berserker

If you want to provide both damage and control, I’m a big fan of traps. You can go 30/30/5/0/5. This will give you the most power/crit/crit_dmg from traits as well as some condition duration to help with control and vulnerability. It also gives you the points in skirmishing for throwing down traps.

However, do please note that traps, when traited to be thrown, can only be thrown up to 600 range, so you can’t hide in the back while using them.

I do not currently recommend using spirits in their current incarnation, even if you’re sitting at 1,500 range, as they will only be benefitting you back there and their effects are lackluster at best.

• Frost Spirit: 35% chance for +10% damage. +10% 35% of the time is only +3.5% damage … pathetic.
• Stone Spirit: 35% chance for protection … not very helpful when you’re at 1,500 range. even less helpful in that it is only 3s
• Storm Spirit: 35% chance for swiftness … pathetic. Completely useless … even worse is the fact that even with continuous shortbow fire you couldn’t get perma-swiftness with this without at least +25% boon duration and that’s assuming you proc it every 10s exactly.
• Sun Spirit: 35% chance to burn … you have +0 cond dmg with berserker and someone else may already be applying burning
• Longbow fires slowly, so will proc less often.

So, just to be sure.
Forums have a nasty tendency to polarize absolutely everything, and the information that’s getting glossed over is pretty important sometimes. Dungeons do lean in favor of DPS, but that doesn’t mean ‘Glass Cannon or Bust’. It just means support and control efforts have value that variates based on your group and the fight, and direct damage is consistently valuable across all encounters.

Anyway,
The thing worth noting about glass cannon Ranger is that it has a pretty high skill floor before it gets effective. Because you not only have to have the knowledge base and situational awareness to be able to keep yourself up with glass defenses, but be comfortable enough in that to routinely shift your attention to your pet and multitask it’s survival as well. CoF path 1 is sort of ideal circumstances for glass cannons, and if you’re in a place right now where you’re experiencing alot of dying during that path, other dungeons might prove more challenging to the point it’s undercutting your effectiveness.

full berserker ranger with power and critical damage traits wont work , because both the racial skills (pet) or utility skills do not allow it .. at the moment at least .

You can , however , effectively go for hybrid builds . The ranger excels at sustained damage anyway , so it is a good idea to be able to constantly shoot for medium damage then burst and die or run away .

wow with all that being said i think ill delete my ranger and move to an engineer or melee elementalist, well thanks for all the posts and trying to help me learn the hard way about how much i suck as a ranger lol

@Chokolata: a glass cannon ranger can be quite good and the traits do support it. 30/30/5/0/5. It works very well.

@Bubblez: No need to delete your ranger.

If you “suck” at something, leaving for something else doesn’t guarantee you won’t “suck” at that too.

If you enjoy the Ranger, stick with it and learn. That’s how you get better.

As always though, the choice is yours. If you don’t think you can evolve past “bad ranger” and/or don’t enjoy being one, go for it. It will at least be one less ranger putting a stigma on the class.

oh i love my ranger, that is the only class i really play but it seems like everyone is trying to push me away, and i said seems like. i talked with someone in the game about how i had my ranger set up and the suggested since i love shortbow the full rabid stats set up of toughness precision and condition damage. so ill give that a try and if not ill try your set up of going back to glass cannon and using your traits

I think shortbow can work with just about any stats.

Also, my father always taught me growing up to not let others dictate what I do/don’t want to do. Use your own judgement.

I found an organized group that wanted my Ranger and not my Mesmer … and for more than just traps (in fact, didn’t run those the other night and they liked the new build).

There are still plenty of people who believe all of the stigma around the Ranger. That’s annoying, but often those people are bad at the game so I couldn’t care less that they don’t want a ranger in their group.

Those who have run dungeons with me on my Ranger (such as the 3 AC paths I did last night with a single group) have seen how good a Ranger can be.

so with a full zerker gear and those traits u put, with trap utilities i should be a over all good ranger? i know that i have to learn, mess up, and learn from my mistakes over n over but like i said seems like my random build i had is far more superior than what everyone is trying to make me run but then again i was running power precision and condition damage on all stats, on thing i thought i learned was that my pet needs the power stats to boost his damage….idk if this is true or not but thats where yall come in

You’ll want to change out traits/utilities based on the fight, but yes. Berserker with those traits will allow you to output quite a bit of damage. When there’s room, you’ll be quite safe from 1,500 range with the longbow and maybe not want to take traps unless there are adds, etc. When you need AOE, to kite, are going to be close, etc., traps are great.

When you aren’t at range, you’ll need to be careful because zerker is glassy, especially with these trait allocations. the 50% faster endurance regen should help with this.

do i have to use a longbow with the berserker gear?

Nope! You can use whatever you want. However, I do not recommend going into melee range as a berserker until you know the content. Being glassy and in melee range when you don’t know the mechanics is just asking to get downed.

I keep every possible weapon I can use in my bag for my current sets of gear (i always have 3 full sets in my bags). This way I can change my weapons, traits, utilities, pets, etc. between fights as needed. I do this for all my 80s.

For example: I often won’t use off-hand axe anywhere … but for the dredge fractal it’s ridiculously good.

No it does not , glass cannon ranger has no utility

Do please elaborate on why that is, Chokolata as Utility is not measured by your ability to take hits.

I believe you’re making the assumption that a glass cannon only takes utilities, etc. that increase their damage.

ok i have switched my armor back to zerker and this is what i have running and i really like it. if i need to change the roman numerals around on my trait lines i will but let me know what u think

I’m very glad to hear it is working for you Bubblez

Keep at it and soon you’ll be back here teaching the rest of us some nice tricks.