Guild Wars 2

I agree! I really do. All I’m saying is that it’s nice to not pile everything on at once when you’re starting out. Learn to use your weapons and switch between them in most situations first, getting a feel for when abilities you might want to use go off cooldown on your other weapon set. Get a handle on your various utility skills and what they are useful for. Try out some different trait lines and experiment a bit with what you feel works. Then go in for the kill with the more high risk / reward type pet combinations was all I really was suggesting.

Trying to do everything at once is a bit detrimental to the learning curve, unless you’re already very used to the type of playstyle GW2 offers. Take your time, don’t worry so much about what other people shout is OP or just plain bad. But DO always try to improve your ability to take down monsters and players alike. Strive to do better, listen to others advice but in the end make up your own mind if it’s something that fits you and your playstyle and you’ll be just fine. Just try not to lock yourself into the mentality that your build can never be improved upon, and always try to do better then you currently are.

But.. we all have those days when we’re maybe not at our best and just want to relax and by god, use a friggin’ bear and shoot at things while drooling over the keyboard instead of hammering at your abilities like a monkey on speed. No?

Indeed it won’t do much DPS, but it won’t die, either. And allows you to pretty much auto-attack things to death while watching TV. As I said, it’s for more of a laid-back sort of playstyle. I like pet switching myself and well, the bear does fine as a backup while leveling if I feel like slacking off Otherwise I’d most likely use two kittens. Jaguar and.. uh.. jungle stalker? Whatever the might buff cat is called now again. Or a bird. Or whatever.

But for a newbie just starting out? The bear is pretty sweet for just learning the class abilities before delving into deeper complexities of pet switching and what abilities they have at their disposal.

Yeah, DPS pets are squishy indeed. A bear, though, can easily hold its own against a veteran mob. Against tougher opponents I like to start with my DPS pet out, buff it with whatever buffs I have lying around. I use a jaguar and a bear combination myself. Open on the mob, wait with stealthing the jaguar until it gets a bit low on health (it tends to drop aggro when it’s stealthed I find) stealth the jaguar, get some good damage in, wait until it gets aggro again (if it does) then switch to the bear. Pet switching and management is quite an important skill to master from what I can understand so might as well start practicing right away.

Or, if you feel that’s too much, just stick with a bear all the way. It’ll tank for you just fine and won’t die from just about anything. Bit lower damage but makes for a generally more laid back play style.

Huh, no replies yet? Well, I havn’t even reached 80 with my little ranger but I think something like this might work out pretty nicely.

I’m currently using a build along the lines of this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQRBHPxG2IQVkdgllFrdgY9YP7/P8DHyzAVhC

Axes are excellent for cleaving down mobs and the shortbow does fairly okay ranged damage. Feel free to switch sword + warhorn for anything else if you don’t like how it plays. GS works pretty okay. Mostly it’s nice to have a melee combo to deal some cleaving dmg.

As for traits, I simply went with lots of opening damage and buffs on kill since things do tend to die quick enough. Just be sure to open with your heaviest hitting ability.

When it comes to secondaries I just went with what I like most while leveling. Moving faster is always a good idea although with this weapon and trait setup you have a pretty easy access to swiftness so it might not be needed. Other then that, I like pushing buttons. If you find that annoying simply go with signets all the way.

As for gear, zerker all the way. Power, precision, crit damage are your friend.

Another option would be to use a spirit build once you hit uh.. 60? Whenever you get access to the grandmaster traits at any rate. Something like this? http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQRBHPxG2IQVTdZlXFodgYzYP7nf4QuHlKUnC
I honestly don’t know alot about spirit builds but if you like running around with a small pet army, it might be your thing.

Oh, and picking up a bear pet for tanking veterans and whatnot might be a good idea.

Good luck!