Guild Wars 2

NondSwiftshot.9168:

Filterkat.2143:

Great Condi Burst/Spam build (Max condi dmg & easy 25 bleed stacks/burn/poison… huge condi pressure with burst and sustain)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAV8YjMqUzaLLGsQ1iABhaVA0sGSWWJg789H+6MeqEZTA-TZRAwAKOIAAuAAUeCAlLD0b/BA

Edit: I realised i left dagger on there in the build editor. Usually I use S/T, dagger is also an option to replace burn with perma poison and extra evades in melee.

I dusted off my ranger to level him up, he is 39 at the moment, and I’m looking at this build. I’m assuming you are running dire gear / rabid weapons / rabid amulets?

I tend to run full rabid. Dire armor is an option also though. I tested dire armor and its still good, but a little less bleed on crit from traits/sigils, since crit chance goes down. full rabid in WvW with this you have just under 19k hp which I think is acceptable and around 50% base crit chance (70 with fury from survival skills) so you get a lot of bleeds from that. I dont find the extra HP from Dire to be a worthwile tradeoff for critchance especially since this build relies on crit to proc bleeds a lot, but I would probably reccomend the setup you suggested while you get used to it, then switch to full rabid once ur comfortable.

Then again I have defence against guards WvW trait which puts me up at close to 23k hp with full stacks.

Andrea.4251:

I’ve been following this thread with interest because I plan to start working a my ranger next week (WvW solo roaming only).
Regen and Trap builds have already been posted (thanks, Prysin and Warriorjrd) so it would be much appreciated if somebody could post a Full Glass Cannon build and a Condition build (assuming the Trapper build posted it’s not a conidtion build itself). I’ve found some builds around but I’m not sure they come from a reliable source and I don’t have lots of gold to spend, so I would prefer to avoid any mistake…
Thanks in advance!

Best Glass sniper build currently (Great range/damage. Good mobility/ability to engage/disengage, addequate defence for glass)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJATRjMqUyaLLGsw1ag9gadAUAndrhw9B3EtdGPVisJ-TpRBwAUuAAP3fYxhAQzRAgcZAAPAAA

Great Condi Burst/Spam build (Max condi dmg & easy 25 bleed stacks/burn/poison… huge condi pressure with burst and sustain)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAV8YjMqUzaLLGsQ1iABhaVA0sGSWWJg789H+6MeqEZTA-TZRAwAKOIAAuAAUeCAlLD0b/BA

Edit: I realised i left dagger on there in the build editor. Usually I use S/T, dagger is also an option to replace burn with perma poison and extra evades in melee.

Otherwise as others have said BM bunker is great. Never been too into trappers myself although they are effective, loved them in gw1 but gw2 they feel a little clunky.

Hadese.4382:

I have been runing this build in PvP (except I prefer dagger for perma poison/Zephyr over the speed signet). Doing great so far, i’ll try the warhorn tonight.

WH is redundant since switching to krait runes kitten can acheive the same bleed burst plus has sustain to boot. Instead of A/WH i run either S/T or S/D.

S/T is the more offensive option, adds another condition, and with offhand training/bonfire provides great point pressure in sPvP. S/D is the more defensive option. Perma poison and extra evades. No need for WH with krait runes anymore. They were previously used to capitalise on bleed on crit stuff and increase burst, but krait + SB provides enough bleed stacks.

I recommend sticking to S/D or maybe trying out S/T alternatively.

solrik.6028:

If you are going to help, please don’t make the ranger seem like the best class there is.
The first line is very misleading, as rangers are the opposite.

You are also encouraging the “Bearbow” playstyle with the “Open world” paragraph.

Otherwise everything fits

I never said ranger is the best class there is. No class is the best class at everything, otherwise everyone would roll that. I said they are highly regarded, which is true, if you are talking to people who actually have a clue about the game. Im not talking about the oppinion on the playerbase, as I will agree, there are plenty of terribad rangers out there, probably moreso than other classes, but anyone who knows anything about all the different classes, knows that the ranger, as a class running frost spirit/spotter is a significant party DPS increase and is a valued addition to a dungeon party. Or that a spirit or bunker BM ranger is a force to be reckoned with in sPvP. Obviously there are still people who have the 4 warrior 1 mesmer full zerk, no other classes mentality… but those people are ignorant and have no idea about what the other classes bring to the table. they just want of the 4 absolute max DPS build available and one util class because they think that that will equal the most overall DPS for the party. However tests have concluded that having spotter/frost spirit in the mix decreases party boss killtimes. And other classes also bring things to the table that warriors and mesmers cant.

As for bearbow, no I am not encouraging it. bear is one of the worst possible pets to choose from. Bows however are completely fine. In full zerk with LB in open world, I can usually kill my target before even getting into melee range to use S/WH. Its also basically mandatory to use a bow or ranged weapon for most world bosses, not just for rangers, but for all classes. So while i am not encouraging bearbow, I am definately encouraging the use of bows in open world.

@ OP – Ranger is generally regarded quite highly in all end game aspects as long as you build appropriately for the situation.

Open World & leveling – Easy mode. Pets take aggro, you can roll full glass and pew pew from a distance or facetank in melee since pets will generally take the aggro anyway and you wont take much damage. World bosses/champs – know the fights and swap between range/melee appropriately for the fight. Sit back – get bags.

Dungeons/fractals – Rangers are very useful since they can bring frost spirit/spotter which boosts the whole parties DPS by a significant amount. You also do substantial damage yourself if running the meta dungeon build. Like others have stated though, this build requires full glass (zerker) and a melee setup to be optimal.

sPvP – we are top tier point holders & effective roamers. Almost everyone will have problems dealing with a spirit ranger or BM bunker on point. There have also recently emerged several effective roaming condi spam builds that do great spike damage and pressure other players effectively.

WvW – Depends on what you like to do. If you like small group or roaming, rangers excel at this kind of combat and are a great class for doing this. If you plan on running with a larger group or full on zerg however, other classes tend to be better for that. Zerging is really the only part of the game where rangers are sub par as they do not bring anything beneficial to a zerg. But for a smaller group ( 10 or under ) rangers have a lot of useful tools that can help out in smaller skirmishes.

Lace.9472:

Fluffball.8307:

Read this: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Guide-PvE-Meta-Ranger/first#post3868491

The idea that rangers are poor at the end-game PvE or WvW comes from people using bows and bears, commonly known as “bearbows”. Bearbows are generally kicked from any party in any game mode on sight.

First question, do you mean people using bows AND bears together. Or people who EITHER bows OR bears?

Second question, if our meta dictates a melee only focus in high level content and any ranged weapons are not ideal or balanced – then would you not agree that warrants negativity within the community?

Third, almost every mmo has a “archer” profession. These tend to be very popular. Do you agree it’s excusable to assume some players would chose the Ranger profession (being the closest profession to Archer) and would be negatively impressed at the inability to used ranged weapons in high level content?

Disclaimers (I find it annoying that I have to specify these, but meh): I hereby state I do not assume nor expect the Ranger class to mean “ranged”. On that basis I do not expect the ranger to be exclusively ranged. However I do expect the ranger to be inclusively ranged. So I expect a VIABLE ranged build in high level content. Of course, I would expect a viable build for ALL weapon sets, classing all weapon sets for all professions that aren’t ‘viable’ in high level content – as a on going failure to deliver on core gameplay mechanics by AN.

It depends what kind of high level content you are talking about. Open world, World bosses, PvP and WvW ranged is completely viable, even probably preffered. Most world bosses basically require you to attack from range, and range in PvP/WvW can give you a distinct advantage.

The problem with the melee-centric meta you mention for fractals/dungeons isn’t neccesarily that the weaponsets are badly designed, its that the meta is to stack buffs to gain the maximum possible damage from the combination of fury/might, giving the party maximum possible damage. This means that players have to be in a certain proximity to receive these buffs, thus forcing players to stack together to benefit from them, and since the majority, if not all of the weaponsets on all of the classes with the highest damage coeficients are melee, people stack melee to optimise damage.

The main reason the melee weapons were generally designed with higher damage coeficients or attack speeds (higher DPS), is to encourage a risk/reward system in the game. Being in melee range means you are taking more risk in taking damage from mobs, so it only makes sense that for taking this risk, players are rewarded with higher damage. If people could run full glass and do more damage from a range, id assume that the meta would shift to all ranged stacking, since more damage would be done from range, and there would be lower risk in going down since they can pew pew mobs down from a distance and take much less damage.

I would still argue that rangers are still the best class dealing damage with a bow, and bows are completely viable in 80% of the games content. Its just not optimal in dungeons or fractals where stacking in melee is generally the best option to maximise dps for all classes, not exclusively rangers (bar a few isolated situations requiring ranged combat).

KOPPER.1458:

@filterkat:

Thanks for the reply. She doesn’t have a go to build or weapon set. other than she wants to use Longbow. I don’t really know where to start so I figured taking the meta and adding a little survivability for open world stuff works well. The only dungeon she runs is TA and only because she is working on her Legendary Longbow. Otherwise she doesn’t do dungeons or fractals ever.

She does do world bosses though. Teq, Wurm, and the others.

I do take her into wvw on occasion but it’s fairly rare and in doing so I’d have her bring another class that has lots of AOE’s like her Necro so tagging is easier for her.

If she likes longbow ill give you a great longbow build. Does great damage and is very versatile. My personal oppinion is that this is the best longbow build for WvW and can easily be used and modified for PvE.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJATRjMqUyaLLGsw1ag9gadAUAndrhw9WcwtNA-TpRBwAUuAAP3fYxhAQzRAgcZAAPAAA

In PvE conditions arent really an issue so you can take 10 out of WS to put 10 in skirmishing and pick up pets prowess for extra pet damage, but for WvW shell want the condi removal on survival skills. Also, PvE, stuns arent an issue so LR can be substitued for another utility, but its a must have for WvW for survivability (condi cleanse/evade/stun & immob break). GS can also be swapped to S/D depending on preference.

Like in the link I run full zerkers with this in WvW and do pretty well, but i tend to have a death wish, so if you wanted to add a bit of survivability, exchange peices with knights, starting with the armor, keeping zerk trinkets and see how that goes. If she still feels squishy, swap the weapons and trinkets as well. There are a lot of built in suvival abilities with this setup though. LR for evade/stunbreak/condi clear, QZ also clears conditions, Longbow has the knockback and the short stealth, and Greatsword has swoop for disengage and a long block on it.

She will do great damage from 1500 range and will basically allways hit the target even if its moving. Its a great build with some great survival built in while still focusing maximising longbow damage. If she wants to use longbow this is probably the best all round setup.

This build has basically no condi clear. The condi clear from spring wont be enough to keep you up against a condi spam necro or theif, or any condi spam class. This is a big problem… especially in WvW…

SoS is not overly effective, especially untraited, and there are much better options.

A/T are primarily condition weapons and you are specced into power. Axe is OK with power being hybrid, but not great. Its good at tagging multiple targets with AA for getting bags in zergs, but the power damage is quite a lot worse than other weapons, and the other skills on axe apply conditions. Torch is pure condition and is basically useless on a power set aside from the fire field for stacking might, but you dont have a blast to do so. Your best bet for an offhand set would either be GS, S/WH or S/D. All of those combinations have much better defensive/mobility options built in opposed to A/T and do superior power based damage.

Gear wise, you are better off going knights than PVT. Vitality is almost useless for most builds, unless your a necro stacking 30+k health with toughness to boot, and usually they go dire because they can spec condi and still have hard hitting conditions which they can spam. Toughness is generally better, which PVT has, and so does knights, but vitality increases your health pool which decreases the effectiveness of your heals. Sure you have more health in PVT, and you heal for the same amount, but you heal for a lesser % of your health pool, making it harder to get back to max health. So you are better off maximising damage. If you want a higher effective health pool, get some healing power.

Trait wise your all over the place. Power line, it is basically mandatory to take read the wind grandmaster if you plan to fight from 1500 in order to effectively hit targets, otherwise you will often miss your target and you are better off sticking to 1200 and taking peircing instead. WS soften the fall is basically useless. If you know the terrain, you shouldnt have problems navigating WvW and should know what you can drop from and what will kill you. Its generally a bad idea to retreat or chase enemies off cliffs. If an enemy jumps off a cliff and survives, chances are hes super low, and with 1500 range +RTW, you should be able to hit him and finnish him off from the top of the cliff. There are also much better traits to take in this slot. Emapthic bond > Bark skin. Also, whats the point in taking a trait that increases regen, when the only regen you get is a small amount from spring while you stand in the AOE, and some from the minor trait. You have no healing power to scale it so its not very effective and no other sources of regen or healing, making that a wasted trait. Basically your wasting a trait two a short lasting forms of regen, one being positional (need to be in AoE on pulse) and another which is circumstantial and a one off.

awge.3852:

Filterkat.2143:

I found that poison is uncommon to apply with this build (even with 2 sources) unless you find yourself in melee at some point in the fight. The poison shot from SB has a fairly pitiful duration, and only stacks to a reasonable amount at point blank range due to the spread. At that point, you are better off switching to S/T anyway which has access to a better source of poison, but I have found vipers strike to complete the dodge but miss the attack frequently, thus not applying the poison (this has been a known issue for a while).

You can pick up that sigil which applies poison on first hit after weapon swap, its very useful to time the weapon swap just as they’re about to heal so you reduce their effectiveness. Also about S/T, if the enemy does not have aegis, try opening the fight with throw torch and before the torch hits quick swap to shortbow, no cooldown will be involved since the torch hasn’t hit the enemy yet, but they will get burned.

Interesting… Definately an option. Wouldnt be able to fit it on SB because SB needs those sigils to maximise its effectivness. However, once corruption stacks are max, it would definately be an option to switch offhand for one with that sigil considering I have Corruption on my underwater weps. But then theres the problem of the sigil being activated on a primarily melee set, and I preffer to stay ranged if I can help it. Decisions, Descisions…

Yeah I quickly figured out that torch/swap trick after I made the build. Its great, basically gives you a free weapon swap.

Also, bleed on crit and sharpening stone works with entangle, so as someone said above, drakehound immob in a bunched up group>Sharpening stone>entangle>bonfire… I killed 4 people in 1 combo with this yesterday in WvW… plus with krait runes/food your entangle also applys torment and poison and extra bleed stacks and they all last for a while. deadly kitten…

TurtleDragon.3108:

You can hit 7k+ easily with signet of the wild active.

Edit: I forgot about the Ferocity patch for some reason, it might still be doable with cooldowns and light armor targets.

Tested, yes this is true, well close to since ferocity patch, you would be sacrificing a utility though. QZ and frost spirit are a must in dungeons IMO. Has anyone got any idea what the damage gain/comparison is between Sic Em and SOTW? Factoring in cooldowns etc? The extra pet damage is substantial, but then again so is the gain from SOTW. I guess it would depend on cooldowns vs extra damage done. Any1 a math nerd?

Bambula.3649:

nah…not rly for 2k ? Oo

compare to group or solo but today i got in arah p4 7k auto´s

7k autos? unlikely… With full might stacks full zerker, food, consumables, full party buffs & max vuln on target in a lvl 80 instance I hit for around 5 to 5.5k AA.

This is still considerably good though considering MH swords attack speed + pet damage. Ive never seen or heard of anyone hitting 7k AA on MH sword though.

Generally speaking though, Solo with no party buffs, Avg around 1.8k-2.5k with the occasional 3k hit in there sometimes.

^^^ yep he pretty much nailed it here.

One particular note to mention that I think is quite substantial, with the new trait patch, we got SotF grandmaster which gives fury and condi cleanse to our survival skills. Great if you use multiple survival skills & want active condi cleanse, or otherwise lacked condi cleanse.

PvE, we do have an effective meta build for dungeons/speed running, adds a lot of party damage. Its not the highest damage build out of all the classes but is competitive with added group support. (Note: it is the highest damage dealer if weilding an eles lightning hammer).

PvP, still top tier point defenders. Spirits/bm bunker are still considered some of the best point holders in the game. We dont have too many effective offensive builds for pvp however.

WvW, weve gotten better. We excel at roaming and in small groups as we always have (3-10) , and new runes/gear have improved that even more but still arent the best class for zerging. The new longbow trait allows for effective sniping from great range, so if you were to zerg… zerker LB/GS spec 6/0/2/6 would be the way to go.

shadowpass.4236:

this build has been around for awhile… lol, since the patch came out, ive been using this in wvw:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAV8fjEq0yaBL2sQ1iABhaVA0sGSWWJg789G+6CW1A-TlSAwAYUCKU9Ha6Go8AACcEAgY+DwFA4xBBo3+DRV+RKAYWWB-w

personally, I open with sb aa with sharpening stone, that usually stacks around 10 bleeds right in the first few seconds, then I stun to stop their opening move, aa some more, 3, then 4 if they get close and swap…

if ur fighting more than one person, a good combo to do is try to get them bunched up, have drakehound immobilize, entangle, and drop bonfire right on top of them, this kills very fast lol

Really? I havent seen anyone post anything about it before, and I came up with the build through my own theorycrafting/testing. It is definitely possible, actually quite likely that other people came to the same conclusions and were using the same build before me. But no one has posted about it yet to my knowledge, so I thought Id share it with the ranger community seeing as it is such an effective build.

Nice touch with the toxic crystal. I completely forgot about that and will have to swap tuning for that now. Will also have to test Drakehound over wolf for immob, but definately sounds promising. In PvP however i still see wolf fear being useful, so maybe i will swap jaguar for drakehound and run wolf/drakehound instead.

Im curious however as to why you take P/V/CD jewels and stack bloodlust instead of corruption or perception. Wouldnt you be better off maximising your crit and condition damage instead of gaining a bit of power and HP? Since the build relies on conditions and crits, I would think it would be more effective to min/max those stats.

If you wanted to gain some HP your best bet would be to swap some armor peices for dire (chest, legs, shoulders) for 2k hp gain and 7% crit loss, and then make up for the lost crit by stacking perception. The power your gaining from those jewels & bloodlust is rather insignificant damage wise and is basically a lost stat IMO.

@Awge Yep totally agree. Sometimes guildies and I muck around in our custom PvP arena just dueling etc. testing builds, and on multiple occasions, with builds I normally beat them with almost 100% of the time, they find a way to beat me, either due to bad combat decisions by me, smart play by them, or them speciffically modifying their build to counter mine (they can be kittens sometimes). Other times, both in tPvP or roaming out in WvW, I get bested, and have no idea how/what happened, and sometimes I make critical mistakes under pressure, or was simply outplayed leading to my death. I agree that bonfire and generally speaking S/T is only useful if you will be fighting in melee. I do usually open with S/T however since with offhand training, throw torch has 1200 range, and its nice to get at least a burn on them before I dump a crapton of bleeds on them. I found that poison is uncommon to apply with this build (even with 2 sources) unless you find yourself in melee at some point in the fight. The poison shot from SB has a fairly pitiful duration, and only stacks to a reasonable amount at point blank range due to the spread. At that point, you are better off switching to S/T anyway which has access to a better source of poison, but I have found vipers strike to complete the dodge but miss the attack frequently, thus not applying the poison (this has been a known issue for a while).

As for the tradeoff with bark skin, if you still wanted to take bark skin, personally I would rather have the bleed on crit trait over Keen Edge. If you already have a sharpening stone in util slot, by doing this you technically lose your second burst, but gain significant sustain in the meantime. The bleed on crit trait has no internal cooldown, so with krait runes & bleed duration sigil on shorbow (if my math is right) It should mean that you have a straight 66% chance on crit for a 5 second bleed in sPvP (longer in wvw with koi cakes). This means that without flanking bonus, and without sharpening stone, you are still able to apply significant amount of bleeds to the target between bursts, due to the high crit chance and fast attack speed. Good positioning will almost double your off burst bleed stacking (flanking bonus) also.

I reccomend testing your bleed stacking with just the bleed on crit trait, from the front of a target (so no flanking bonus) and additionally from the side/back with the bonus, and you may be pleasantly surprised at the results.

I just bought some dire peices to check what the difference/tradeoff would be. Your most optimal tradeoff would be switching the chest legs and shoulders. This would give you aproximately an extra 2k hp, at the loss of 7% crit chance. In this instance I would suggest taking accuracy over corruption so you can stack precision to make up for the loss in crit chance from armour, but you will lose some condi damage. Personally I feel that nearly 19k hp base + almost 3k armour is a good amount, but if you wanted to add health, this would be the best way to go.

Alternatively In WvW, I dont know what rank you are, but have you considered maxing out defence against guards? at max level, when you kill a guard you gain a vitality stack, up to 5 stacks. With 5 stacks you will have aproximately 22.5k or so health in full rabid.

If you want to add some health in your best bet would be dire. You would lose some crit, but gain vitality and keep the condition damage and toughness. With PTV the power trait kind of goes to waste as the build focuses more on conditions, so Dire would be the better option. I will have to try this out myself as it seems it may be a good way to add HP. It all depends on how much it will affect crit chance/bleed procs.

Sube Dai.8496:

It does feel like a lot to invest 2 traits for one utility but sun spirit should not be underestimated IMO, as it is adding AOE burns to your axe as well as your pet.

And the burning axe I feel is better than the torch because the AOE is not restricted to one little area. Only thing I think is lacking with this is burn duration.

I used shortbow for the longest time but I have only recently switched to A/D. Sure the pressure and the single target damage is good but the bleed and poison durations are terrible, and like I said I can still get 20+ bleed stacks easily with this setup. Also the aoe from axe means you can clear camps a lot faster.

I have also gone right off sharpening stone, particularly the trait. I just find it goes off at the worst possible times in a fight, and usually my target is dead before all 5 stacks have been used.

Also I would say that EB is in no way redundant, particularly if you are facing more than one opponent. Your build can only remove roughly 6 conditions every minute – that’s terrible compared to EB. Plus I believe entangled is bugged and not removing anything.

GS is just for movement as you have noted. However the geomancy sig means it has some condition application, as does the bleed on crit. I find its good to be able to swoop away and reset if I missed my initial Axe 2 and Dagger 5 combo.

My build also acheives 20+ bleed stacks… quite often 25… with the shortbow, and with 95% bleed duration the bleeds applied last significantly longer (from 3-6 seconds for on crit/flanking bleeds, and from 12-24 seconds from sharpening stone, or whatever it is, im not in game right now in a lecture at uni). I have 2 bursts opposed to 1, and have superior sustain in between. If you trait for offhand training, the AOE radius of bonfire is actually quite descent, and while throw torch is only single target, the burn duration is significantly longer than sun spirit proc. (basically perma burn with koi cakes)

Multi target, axe is better, however single target shortbow will by far outperform MH axe.

Sword is just as good at disengaging as GS, even better IMO if you know the Deselect 180 camera trick. It will get you a much farther distance away than GS Swoop will on its own, and especially if you include LR in the combo. I keep a GS in my bag for out of combat mobility, but sword is still technically better at disengage with that trick, and has more condi options and evades.

Eggyokeo.9705:

No need to be sorry mate every one is entitled to there own opinion. But i will take the time to do some rebuttals.

First the point about not optimized, in regards to damage your pet is the damage dealer in this build you job is to soft cc, poison and deal some additional damage hence the short bow. Your cat hits like a truck, especially if you buff it with might form RaO then pop the signet and use F2 while you MT then to immobilize and provide fury. The celestial amulet with this build provides enough sustain that if you cant kill your opposition you can hold your own until help arrives.

For the point about lack of condition removal, you have sigil of purity gong of every 10s to remove incidental condi, remove poison on evade, two active condi clears LR and MT and Melandru’s to shorted short condis such as Fear, Chill, Cripple and imob. also in battling condis you have a lot of vitality form NM trait-line and the amulet plus regen form Signet of the wild and Natural Healing. For handling burst damage that is what Natures Protection is for.

Now for the lost stat when using the GS, i use the great sword for moving between the points quickly, for the evade on auto-attack for the block and for the stun, and mauls still hit pretty hard. saying the GS is a power weapon only, assumes that I’m using it for offense proposes. S/D could be use instead but i like the great sword, but that may just be me.

I think this whole min-max mentally is what make this game sometimes feel like a game of rock/paper/scissors. When you start thinking hybrid you can say to your self. If I’ve got this point capped and a bunker comes at me (you might be sitting on far at this point) than no-problem as they cant kill me, point stays mine. If and assaulter/burst-er comes at me all i have to do i survive there bursts (block, evade interrupt) and then out live them through sustained damage and pet spikes.

Relying on your pet for damage is generally a bad idea aside from PvE. in PvP in mobile situations pets are easily dodged or kited as animations are generally fairly obvious. Jaguar in stealth can be good but the stealth has a cooldown. You may be applying soft CC to allow your pet to hit more often however you are better off having the pet CC + damage (wolf or possibly spider) and you focusing on damage yourself, since you tend to be more of a reliable source of damage than your pet.

Looking back over the condi cleanse you do have sufficient cleanse, i will give you that one. but still lack healing to be effective at point holding. A good bunker will eventually wear you down, because his healing is superior, so he will outheal your damage, even if it is better than his damage. You may survive for a while, but if you stay on point, he will eventually wear you down as your healing isnt as high as it could be, and you lack regen. TU just wont cut it alone even against a mediocre damage bunker, as he will wear you down between cooldowns.

Against a good burst player, your defence wont be up to par. Even full bunkers can fall prey to a full burst mesmer or theif if caught off guard, and their healing and defence is superior to yours as they have invested much more stat points into those stats, and their entire build revolves around defence. So against an experienced burst/roamer how do you expect to stand a chance. Especially considering you will most likely have to deal with a theifs stealth, or a mesmers stealth and clones in this situation, which makes it dificult for you to apply damage to them, so even if you do outlast their initial burst, they will either stealth or clone and distract you long enough to complete another burst on you which will finnish you off.

Mobility shouldnt be an issue for a point holder, as generally the roamers will get there before you anyway, and can usually decap it and hold their own until you arrive to secure the point. Once you are on point and defending, Mobility is useless.

It seems like you are trying to fill the roles of both bunker/point holder and a roamer, which unfortunately are at completely opposite ends of the spectrum stat/trait wise.

Don’t get me wrong, you may have fun and success with this build in hotjoin or solo q against mediocre players which is fine if that is what you like to do, but in team arena against an experienced team with a set comp you will get destroyed.

JRoy.7180:

For running this build in WvW would you recommend all Rabid stat type for armor?

Edit: On second reading I see that you do, I was thrown off by the link to a PvP build with no PvE gear.

Yes rabid is reccomended. If you are feeling especially brave you could go rampagers for additional damage but would lose out on a bunch of defence and this build already does impressive damage. If there were a Condi/crit/vit set then that would also be viable, but i dont know of one.

This build is even more potent in WvW due to koi cakes or rare vegge pizzas & tuning crystals. Increasing your condi duration by additional 40% means your bleed duration is at around 95% essentialy doubling the length of your bleed stacks. Shortbow generally applys constant 3 second bleeds on average. Increasing this to 6 seconds is a huge benefit as it allows for more stacks to build. This benefits both burst as sustain as your bleed stacks will be effective for longer meaning more will stack. Your burst (20-25 bleed stacks) will also last significantly longer if they dont cleanse (about 8 seconds or so) dealing significant damage. If they cleanse, that is no problem as you have a second burst up your sleeve, and you can reapply and maintain sustain in the meantime. Your burn and poison will also benefit from the additional duration from koi/pizzas giving you practically perma burn/poison if it isnt cleansed.

Also for wvw i highly reccomend the corruption sigil on S/T. You can build stacks fairly quickly with S/T in WvW and then have more potent condi damage. Precision stacking is also an option, for a higher chance to bleed on crit, but your bleeds wont be as potent as with corruption. Any GS is also reccomended to be kept in the bag for between combat mobility. Swap SB for GS out of combat to move around more effectively, as swaping 1 handers with 2 handers os a bit of a pain and requires more inventory management.

theodor.3480:

Longbow power build is viable atm. 6/0/2/6/0 with SotF and read the wind, lb as main and gs offhand is pretty decent. You will be squishy as hell but it’s not your job to fight on point, your job is to snipe those pesky power necros/staff eles, or put presure on the enemy bunker.
Spirit ranger is pretty cheese in my opinion, but that’s just me, i played it but got bored of it pretty quicky, it’s almost a no brainer

^^ this is probably your only option. The build is great at what it does. I played this for a while and is a viable point pressure build. It has its advantages and does have it downfalls. As stated, you generally cant fight on point with this build being so squishy so generally capping is out of the question so generally you are designated to a roaming/support offensive build, meaning your teammates who are on point are relying on you to do sufficient damage or theyre screwed. You can apply significant pressure on point from a safe distance by sniping with autoattack/quickness, or AOE with barrage. You have excelent mobility with GS meaning that you can be back at home point in a short amount of time to assist home bunker if he needs help.

Your main problem however is other roaming classes (mainly theives and mesmers). Other burst/DPS classes fill a variety of roles better than what the ranger can do. This is why ranger bunkers are so common as that is what they excel at.

Theives specced for burst (which they usually are) also have dificulty fighting on point, being super squishy and all and mostly being restricted to melee range to be effective, meaning AoE and cleave is dangerous for a theif, which is usually in abundance on a point teamfight. so their job is to intercept and burst down lone players roaming around the map, or to assault your home bunker and try and spike him down/decap. The problem is… you are one of those lone players on the map that a theif will assault. His advantage is he has equal or superior mobility, stealth, and higher burst. So a theif will easily get the jump on you and your screwed, because once he knows your game plan, he will be on your kitten the entire game.

Mesmers also have great burst, stealth, mobility, AND a bunch of decoys, so on top of being an excelent roamer that can burst you down quicker than you can burst them, they have defences that can confuse the crap out of people which allow them to somewhat fight on point, making them more useful in team fights or confuse the crap out of you when they find you, making killing them that much harder.

Other DPS builds (usually warrior/guardian/necro) generally have some form of reasonable defence built in allowing them to fight on point with no loss of DPS, meaning if you are attacking a point out of range not taking damage, your teammates who are on point are absorbing more damage without you there. So you really have to do significant damage from a distance to make the tradeoff worth it, or as i said earlier, your teammates are screwed.

Unfortunately, the damage you do from range is considerably less than a burst class that either has the potential to fight on point (thus being more useful in a teamfight) or will out roam you with superior mobility/stealth. The build kind of semi fills the roles of both point offence and roaming, but will never be better than classes specced into doing one of those two tasks.

While this build is viable to some degree, it is outperformed by other classes. If you wanted to play a LB sniper build this would definately be the way to go, but be aware, other classes do your job and fill your roles better. The only advantage to this build over other burst/dps classes is the range, but is kind of a double edged sword.

Eggyokeo.9705:

I’ve been having quite a bit of success with this celestial gives you just enough damage to get a kill with good survival. short-bow and cat for offense, a gs and wolf for the defense

it’s pretty good at holding and often winning a 1v1 and can do a 2v1 for a little while, use a cleric amualte to hold 2v1s better,

Sorry, but this build is not great. It doesn’t optimise damage or defence and needs better condi clear. Melandru runes is ok for short conditions, but conditions with a large duration will still do significant damage before they are cleared, even if they do clear faster than usual. Purity only removes 1 condition on a 10 second cooldown opposed to EB clearing 3/10 seconds and/or SoR 1/10 seconds + full condi wipe + stun break on use. You also lack regen.

Damage wise this build doesnt seem to know what its doing. SB is an ok hybrid weapon and can benefit from power/precision/condi and ferocity so I can see why you chose this weapon with celestial, but being celestial, neither power, nor condi damage is optimised. GS is a pure power weapon and doesnt benefit from condi damage, and the reduced stat distribution from celestial makes neither weapon overly effective, all why not optimising your defence either.

The reason settlers/apothecary is so effective for most bunker builds, particularly rangers, is that condition damage scales and can be optimised off only 1 stat, whereas power damage to be optimal reqires 3 and apothecary/settlers optimises condition damage with 2 optimised defensive stats. Ranger is great at condition spam, so this is a great combination.

While Celestial can be a good option for certain classes/certain builds in certain situations, it generally doesnt work for pvp, particularly for rangers, as stat wise it doesnt optimise any stats, so it will never be great at defence/healing, power damage, or condition, only mediocre. And generally in tPvP against good players, there are only 2 main character setups. Burst damage, and bunkers. A burst character will burst you down faster than you can heal since healing/defence isnt optimised, and a bunker will outlast you because your damage isnt optimised.

KOPPER.1458:

Thanks for the advice everyone. She is simply not the type of player that will ever switch gear or weapon choices or traits unless I tell her she needs to change things. So I try to look for fun, solid, reliable builds that can keep up as best as possible.

Meta builds aren’t essential to completing PvE content. Most PvE content is completable with almost any setup, so unless your wife is a min/maxer thats into dungeon speed clears, or high level fractals, the build is not required. This build, while being the highest DPS build for our class, also leaves little room for error, meaning if she is not careful, she will get downed quickly. If you think she would be comfortable in running a high risk build, and she enjoys fast dungeon clears or high level fractals, this build is highly reccomended. However if she is a bit more of a casual player, id probably reccomend to let her stick to what weapons/setup she is comfortable with. The build can be fun, but also be quite stress enducing in hairy situations especially for less experienced players. Solid would be good to describe this builds damage, but not its survivability.

I have been using this build for a while, and am part of a large guild, some who speed clear and do high level fractals, and others who are much more casual. If I am running with the speed clearers, i will allways opt for this build, it is the best option. If I am helping some of the casuals doing dungeons, I tend to keep the build, but switch to knights armor and keep zerker trinkets or switch to full knights depending on the partys DPS, as knights armor allows me to take more hits. If there Isnt max DPS in the party (full zerker) then the boss will take longer to go down, meaning the boss will do more damage, increasing your chances to go down, hence the swap to knights in a casual group with average dps.

Not too bad, but i feel you are investing too many traits for 1 spirit. Empathic bond would not be required using SotF if you invested in a second survival utility instead of sun spirit (at that point your condi removal would be overkill with 2 utility survival skills, one from sharpening stone from trait and entagle Elite + EB, making EB redundant), and you would gain some trait points by dropping EB and added defence swapping out spirit traits. GS is useless for a condi build and there are many better options. May I suggest something like this?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAV8fjMqUzaLLGsQ1iABhaVA0sGSWWJg789G+6MWpEZTA-TZRAwAKOIAAuAAUeCAlLD0b/BA

Shortbow will acheive the same bleed burst, even better than A/D with the added bonus of sustain due to bleed on crit + sharpening stone + flanking bonus + the significantly faster shortbow attack speed (more bleed on crit), plus the ability to kite. You still have poison, evades and a leap finnisher on sword, Torch gives you 2 sources of burn, including an AOE burn/Combo field. Having 2 instances of sharpening stone (1 utility, 1 traits) gives you WAY more bleed burst, and the chance to potentially burst multiple times in a short period, which will be way too much to handle cleanse wise for enemies to deal with. I tried a variation with axe, and while Axe can acheive great burst bleeds, lacks sustain and is a bit of a 1 trick pony.

Sigils your better off going bleed on crit/bleed duration on the shortbow, since shortbow applys constant, short duration bleeds (avg 3 seconds) so being able to increase that to 6 seconds using food/runes/sigils means you can effectively stack WAY more bleeds.

I took bleed on crit/corruption on S/T to still have the ability to apply descent bleeds with s/T plus build corruption stacks, However I may possibly swap the bleed on crit eventually possibly to burn duration, to maximise burn duration before switching to SB to apply bleed (where the bleeds add up and count). S/T isnt designed to apply the bleed, but moreso poison and burn plus provide evades, but is still capable of applying bleeds to a descent level (7-10 stacks avg).

The only thing lost in my build opposed to yours is out of combat mobility from GS. This can be easily fixed by keeping a GS in the bag and swapping to it between combat.

The advantages of my build is more burst, more sustain damage/constant condi application/spam. The Sharpening stone from traits also acts as a cleanse and fury gain meaning some added passive condi cleanse and more fury uptime, leading to more crits, in turn creating more bleed stacks, plus the ability to kite with shortbow.

I tried using MH axe for this originally and while able to provide a reasonable burst, lacks sustain. Shortbow can acheive the same initial burst as axe, with added sustain + and ability to apply that burst from a distance. Axe bleed burst is only effective at point blank range due to the spread of the shot at a distance.

BM bunker is better for home point defender. Its more defensive than spirits, can last longer, and doesnt have buffs to share, so being solo is fine. Spirits are better for mid bunker as the team benefits more from the buffs, and as someone said above, go to waste if theyre at home point. With BM bunker you can generally wear down most enemies with condi spam and should easily survive a 2v1 situation.

BM Bunker: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQRAnY8fjEq0yaFLOsQ1agMhqdAksd67bIFSVXVwFLVlE-TJhHABPVGw2TCAAPBgM2fAA

LR can be swapped for SoR for additional condi removal and stunbreak, however I like LR for the stun/immob break, dodge and leap back. SoS can be swapped for SotH for added mobility, and technically increased pet damage, at the loss of defence.

Sigil of renewal can be swapped for corruption or energy depending on preference. Energy is a good option for extra dodges. Corruption is not so great for sPvP (great for WvW roaming though) as defence is more important than offence being a point bunker, and you may build stacks 1v1 or 2v1, but if you get overwhelmed and rushed you will lose all your stacks. Renewal is an option I have been testing recently. heals for close to 1k with healing power, which doesnt sound like too much, but its every weapon swap which is basically whenever swap is off cooldown, and isnt too bad considering the reduced stats/damage in sPvP and can sometimes mean the difference between life and death in a tight situation.

2 traits can be swapped depending on preference. Oakheart salve can be swapped for offhand training, giving bigger bonfire AoE Radius for bigger on point condi pressure, at the loss of defence. Speed training can be swapped for another pet type specific trait if you specialise in one kind of pet as in 2 wolves or 2 cats etc. I preffer having jaguar for dps and wolf for CC however.

In that case if you are familliar with the theif withdraw trick, then youll be fine. Only difference is that you are technically disengaging backwards, so be wary of cliffs around you in wvw while doing so. if this is the case then S/D would be superior for disengage IMO (but not for active mobility between battles), and if you have norn racial youll be set to disengage. Just make sure to remember to deselect target after LR before the 180 and popping the second part of sword 2.

If you plan to fight at max range, RTW is crucial for LB to land on target. Without it, your arrows will be too slow and enemies can basically dodge the arrows simply by strafing. RTW will allways hit if your in range unless they evade/dodge or block. Also, it doesnt say it on the tooltip, but with RTW, your effective range is technically closer to 1800 rather than 1500 due to increased velocity. It will show out of range on your bar, and wont auto attack, but if you manually hit the 1 button it will hit from that range.

This is a great build for WvW, and I use it if im in a group of 3+ (solo roaming wont work with this build unfortunately). Sometimes I like taking Sic Em when small group roaming as it is great for dealing with theives which are plentiful in wvw, although you lose a stun break and defensive skill/condi clear. In that particular case, take entangle over norn elite as it will give you a condi clear back, and AOE Immob. It says 1 condi clear on the entangle tooltip, but I have confirmed it does 2 and appears to be a tooltip bug.

If you want to go LB/GS that trait setup is basically the best. You should be taking LR and QZ which are both stunbreaks and condi removal with that setup. Personally in this setup I find SotH crutial for mobility and being able to kite effectively. Id aim for max DPS so full zerk w/ ranger runes. You could probably swap to knights armor and keep zerk trinkets if you feel you need more defence, but honestly if you get caught out your most likely going to die in either setup so may as well maximise damage. GS is great for keeping distance and disengaging fights. Knockback on LB can also be used to keep distance from enemies. Basically you want to keep at max range to be most effective, as well as avoiding the majority of damage being at 1500 range.

S/D is generally less effective with this build as it doesnt give you the mobility that GS does. It does have evades, but honestly if your in melee range and stay there your boned either way so may as well have an easy way out with GS. GS also has a block which can be great for blocking projectiles.

Sword 2 can technically double leap back for a greater distance than GS if you learn to do it properly, but is fairly hard to do in a pinch unless you practice a lot. If you do get this down though you can make a great deal of distance between you and your target with sword 2/LR/ do a 180 and sword 2 again. GS is generally better though for general purpose mobility as it is more controlled.

Nekroseth.5186:

So my problem is :
I want to level an alt for my Warrior (also have Ele) and not sure what. Right now i am considering Ranger a bit more (trough i played 6 years as hunter in wow and feels a bit boring…atleast early game), it has more weapons, and armors fit him a bit more.
I am a bit focused on character look, and sadly Ranger wins in any account on that topic (excluding the amazing looking “the preadator”).
As Con : Ranger feels weak in spvp. I dont have to much experiance. As warrior they seem pathetic in arena. I can mostly easy 2v1 most of them as Axe-shield build…(unlike engineer, that mostly can 2v1 us)

Rangers are top tier in sPvP. Arguably the best bunkers/point defenders. Maybe only slightly outshined by bunker guardian as a bunker, however provide more team utility.

Spirit Rangers are great point defenders, and provide Insta res, group protection, group burn damage, and a straight damage increase, as well as being incredibly hard to kill. A lot of tPvP teams will include a spirit ranger in their comp as they are super effective and useful.

BM Bunkers are great bunkers, almost impossible to kill, and can provide a constant spam of conditions. They dont have the utility of spirits, but are even more survivable, and can generally hold a point 1v3 unless 2 or more are burst/spike characters. I went 6-0 today in solo q, with no deaths on BM bunker. One thing to note though. BM bunker is basically a full melee build, so no bows involved and you should be in melee range all the time to be most effective. Not as common in a group comp as spirits but still considered a top tier bunker.

As far as offensive builds go, there dont seem to be too many good ranger ones for tPvP, as most other classes can perform offensive roles generally better than ranger, but here is a descent roaming/offence build I theorycrafted recently that has so far proven to be quite effective at its job.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Ranger-Danger-Bleed-Burst-Spam-build-WvW-sPvP/first#post3983527

awge.3852:

If you can bring down a bunker necromancer with bleed stacks alone I’d be impressed, same goes for burning/bunker guardian, despite the constant bleed applications you’d have to be able to solidly land all the bleeds and overcome the condi cleansing that other professions have. Not to mention that poison is much more effective at nullifying regen on enemies who depend on it to counter condition damage. Therefore, your approach so far seems really strong on paper, but you’d have to test it out yourself and see if its more effective than the one you ran for almost 2 years. Even though I have run bunker for a while, its 100% aggresive bunker, I just use different sources of condition damage and mix them up into a never ending loop of condition application. At the same time, this rotation works perfectly well with condition removal techniques, healing usage, evading melee and ranged attacks and pet synergy. If you can accomplish all that with bleeding alone then cheers

I somewhat ran into this problem in spvp with the old iteration of this build (only having one major condition), but the new variant that is posted covers those issues and adds defence. With S/T i have access to a long burn and poison with reduced cooldowns for the burn plus added evades from sword plus the bleed burst/stustain & poison on SB. There are also several cover conditions that (hopefully) get cleared before the damage ones (vuln and cripple). Condi cleanse tends to be a null issue since the bleeds reapply so quickly and the burn and poison is on a short cooldown. So generally, when they cleanse, my damage goes down for a few breif seconds, and then its back up to where it was and they wasted a cleanse.

The major flaw with BM Bunker i found is that while it does have a constant stream of multiple conditions, its fairly sustained damage with no burst, so against another good bunker, your damage is generally outhealed, or you are doing very minimal damage. This build gives burst and sustain, allowing you to apply significant pressure and damage to a bunker at the loss of some defence. This build doesn’t have the regen of BM so is less useful for holding/defending a point, but is great for roaming/point assault/skirmishing, and you can definately assist with caps. BM bunker is great, even top tier at its job, of holding/defending/staying on point, however you wouldnt want to use BM buker to roam and assault points as it is better suited at defence. This build succeeds at roaming because it has burst/sustain and constant condition spam/reapplication and reasonable defence.

Bunker is still the better option for holding/defending a point as with regen you can survive 2v1 or 3v1 for a descent amount of time until help arrives, whereas my build would be dead, but then again, this particular build wasnt designed to defend points solo, and rather attack them, generally with other teammates.

Updated… thoughts?

Further testing has lead me to conclude that with krait runes, shortbow is practically just as effective at applying a burst bleed to 25 stacks, making the A/k*ttendundant. So alternatives to A/wh would be S/T for extra condi (burn/poison), AoE and evades. Alternatively S/D for more evades and perma poison. Alternitively GS for Mobility/defence. I know… i know… GS is a power weapon. But would still benefit from bleed on crit and sharpening stone, and the added mobility from swoop is great for any roaming character, as well as being great for engage/disengage. The block can come in handy too under pressure.

So after testing… wow, krait runes are definately a damage upgrade for the build. the bleed duration from sigils/runes food for wvw puts me up to 95% bleed duration, which significantly increases the stack size. slightly less tougness and condi damage but the added duration definately makes it worth it. Previously I had trouble bursting 18 or so bleed stacks on shortbow, Now I dont have any trouble getting 20 with shortbow and have seen it hit 25 multiple times.

I tested warhorn vs torch also. Without using sharpening stone, just through on crit procs, i averaged between 6-9 bleed stacks. I dont understand the math behind that, It doesnt make sense to me, but thats what I got, so ill roll with it. So WH is technically better overall damage wise. Bonfire can still be good in sPvP on point to apply AoE pressure, but single target WH is better.

Condi cleanse isnt really an issue as this build reapplies bleeds so constantly and quickly its kind of insignificant, and buffer/mask conditions are kind of pointless.

Quickening zephyr doesn’t seem overly worth it to me personally. It only added 3 or so bleed stacks non flanking and about 5-6 with flanking bonus. This is nice, but I personally dont think its worth the cooldown and loss in mobility.

If im solo roaming i will generally switch to TU, but if I am with anyone else, spring just seems more useful.

I used to run BM bunker for nearly 2 years roaming and in sPvP. Its a great build, but I got bored with it and wanted to try something different that involved bows and was a little more agressive. I still go back to BM bunker or spirits for tPvP if my team lacking in point holders/bunkers. I am yet to try this build in tPvP but it does well in sPvP and can fight on point for a descent amount of time. Its by no means a point holder/bunker, but can definately assist with point capping and roaming.

awge.3852:

My only comments are, drop sigil of the hunt and pick up quickening zephir, you can apply massive bleeding with short bow by going behind your enemy, using QZ and dropping at least 5-10 shots on them. Works well if you use muddy terrain instead of sharpening stone. Even when not using sharpening stone, just hitting your enemy at an angle using short bow will apply bleeding. Not to mention that spider’s cripple + hitting your enemy at an angle will also give you free bleed stacks. I find it more a risk than a reward to not get bark skin in pvp as a ranger, but if you set yourself the role of roamer/killer rather than point defender then it works, especially if you use sharpening stone to drop a lot of bleeds after the enemy uses their heal. Ask yourself this: what’s warn horn good for that torch can’t overcome in every aspect of a condition build, other than speed? That burning damage is king.

I have considered zephyr over hunt, but like the build is now I find hunt to be very useful for kiting, mobility and maximising pet dps, as melee pets generally have a hard time keeping up without any kind of speed buff. I will test zephyr with ranged pets as they can apply dps/utility a lot easier since they dont have to be point blank to hit, but i will also have to see how much the mobility loss affects my playstyle and roaming capabilities in wvw and spvp. What you say is definately a valid option though.

The warhorn was to increase the initial bleed burst and initiate the burst from a range, as hunters call hits 12 times from up to 1200 range with the trait, and with ~70% crit chance that equates to roughly around 7-8 of those 12 hits critting. So by the time I get point blank from having cast hunters, the initial sharpening stone util has put 5 stacks of bleed on, plus whatever on crit bleeds proc from traits/sigils. The CotW was just a bonus fury and swiftness duration stack, plus a handy blast finisher to use in healing spring. I will however try out the torch tomorrow morning when I log on and see what difference it makes and report my findings. I assume it will most likely give me less initial bleed burst, that makes sense, and im not sure id still be able to acheive 25 bleed stacks, but it is definitely possible that torch will end up providing more overall damage. [Edit]: I suppose it will also give me a fairly large AoE burn with offhand training as well which can be useful on point in sPvP.

@Dolt I have definately considered krait runes, and they are definately tempting. Id loose 100 toughness plus about 90 condition damage from the 6 slot bonus on Undead, but the added bleed duration plus the extra bonuses could be worth it. ill have to test that out tomorrow also.

EDIT: The original build i posted in this thread using A/WH was made redundant when i switched to krait runes since SB can now acheive the same bleed burst as A/WH with kraits bleed duration. Instead of A/WH I opted for S/T for extra burn/poison and evades. You can now potentially acheive 25 bleed stacks + burn + poison with the new improved setup.

S/D is also viable for perma poison and extra evades depending on if you need more evades. GS can also be used alternitively as a defence/mobility weapon in this slot. GS can still benefit from bleed on crit, and is OK but is not going to apply much condi pressure as alternatives so is not optimal damage wise, but can be useful for mobility/defence.

Hi. So I have come up with a solid condition burst/spam build. It capitalises on bleed on crit sigils and traits, plus the use of sharpening stone as util, and through trait procs. It uses SB for bleed burst/sustain + poison, and S/T for Burn/AOE/poison and evades.

I had previously theorycrafted a build with a simillar concept about a year ago, but had much less defensive abilities and lacked condi cleanse. The new traits have allowed for my old build to be modified and fix its shortcomings. Here is the modified build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAV8fjMqUzaLLGsQ1iABhaVA0sGSWWJg789G+6MWpEZTA-TZRAwAKOIAAuAAUeCAlLD0b/BA

The build uses rabid gear, and relies on crit chance to maximise bleeds using trait and sigil on crit procs. The survival utilities are now active condi cleanses, and apply fury, increasing crit chance which in turn increases bleed stacks. additionaly you have access to poison, burn, AoE burn, evades, immobilise + CC from wolf pet.

S/T is usually better to open with. Use throw torch for burn damage. if in melee range use vipers strike to apply poison. At this point you switch to shorbow and activate your SB bleed burst which can potentially (and quite often) get up to 25 bleed stacks. Potentially, you can put 25 stacks of bleed + burn and poison on an enemy this way. S/T can also be used defensively for evades. In sPvP on point, Bonfire is great to apply extra AOE condi pressure. However your primary damage dealer is shortbow.

Shortbow is your Burst and sustain weapon. Pop sharpening stone and autoattack. You should quickly stack many bleeds like this, by comboing stone/bleed on crit procs plus any extra bleeds from flanking bonus. Once your opponent reaches a certain health threshold, you will have access to another sharpening stone through traits for an additional 5 stacks. Even without sharpening stone, you should easily be able to maintain 10+ stacks of bleed. Even if they cleanse, the 10 stacks will be back up within seconds.

Defence wise, sharpening stone LR and entangle are all active condi cleanses. Additionally, the sharpening stone procced by your trait also condi cleanses. You have reasonably high armor for a medium class using Rabid/Undead runes. LR is a stunbreak, immob break, evade and condi cleanse as previously stated. SB 3 is another evade that gives swiftness. Kiting in SB is another good form of defence. Wolf fear can also be used defensively as can entangle.

I moved the corruption to torch. Shorbow seems to benefit more from added bleed duration. Once you have max corruption stacks, It is not a bad idea to have an extra torch with smoldering to swap to for extra burn duration, as long as you have corruption on an underwater weapon.

Entangle has become very powerful with the modifications to the build. Its an AOE immob, bleed, poison, torment- acts as a condi cleanse and gives fury, while also being on a shorter cooldown.

Ive had good success with this roaming or in small groups in wvw and also seems to work well in sPvP with the testing I have done so far.

Any Input/advice/constructive criticism is welcome.

Great build. I actually came up with basically the same trait setup as this when the new trait patch dropped, and have been using it quite successfully in wvw, spvp and to some success tpvp. Then I came across this and im glad someone had the same idea.

My build only differs in a few minor aspects. Same trait point distribution, however instead of keen edge i took steady focus.

I tested keen edge today, I did not think of using this at the time of coming up with the build, and while its very smart using it to benefit from additional fury and an extra condi cleanse, its not on demand, and only happens once in the fight, at an uncontrollable arbritrary time. The condi damage from the bleeds is negligible. I personally preffer having the extra 10% damage basically all of the time, however i suppose this comes down to personal prefference.

I have a condi build i theorycrafted that I will post tonight that benefits much greater from keen edge and the Survival of the fittest bonus which is also an extremely effective build. Its slightly more defensive than this build, but allows for more close quaters fighting than this longbow build depending on your playstyle.

Anyway, i digress… back to the LB build…

I took runes of the ranger to stack more ferocity/precision, and the 7% damage buff when pet is alive. have also tried my scholar set, however pack runes look like a good alternative also.

TU is a bigger overall heal, however I preffer running spring due to the immediate heal plus the condi cleanse and the water field is great in a group situation, or solo, you can cast it and GS swoop through it for an additional 1.5k heal.

Sigils slightly differ too, but yours are completely fine. Im just hell bent on maxing out crit chance and raw damage, so i took force & accuracy on lb and energy/bloodlust on GS.

For pets I also took wolf for control, but took jaguar over drake for burst.

The general idea of this build and this trait setup is quite effective, and is a great build for someone wanting to use longbow for damage in wvw or spvp. Gear and minor tweaks can be done depending on personal prefference, but this is generally a very solid power build for LB.

Just for a laugh, lets go the other way, and lets use a ranger again. There are much better burst/dps classes that will melt you even quicker like theif, mesmer or warrior, but we will use ranger vs ranger for humors sake. Full glass zerk ranger does an average of 3.5k per auto attack on a medium armor class. coupled with quickness, this equates to roughly around 2 auto attacks per second (its a tiny bit over 2 seconds including animations so I will round it down at the end of the math). Lets assume in full PTV you have about 25k hp. In the time it takes for you to rapid fire, I will have done aproximately 28k damage not factoring in my pets damage… (I left out 1 auto attack on the zerk opposed to the rapid fires channel time to account for the attack animation time) thats your whole health pool gone. Meanwhile, I have 19k HP, and assuming you got off your full rapid fire channel, I am still left with 10k hp. If your still alive because you stopped rapid fire to heal, you will still be low on hp, and I can continue to do roughly 4k dps, with 10k+ hp while you have burnt your burst cooldowns and are down to below 1k dps, plus I still have the option to pop my heal for another 4k hp.

This is probably the worst example I could give of burst, since a theif, warrior or mesmer will have gotten you down much quicker than a glass ranger could, but for humors sake I wanted to prove my point with a ranger.

Lets just take a ranger BM bunker as an example, as I am extremely familiar with this setup as I ran it for over a year roaming and still do on occasion. BM bunker averages around 2k dps sustained without factoring in the pet. with the pet, this equates to roughly around 3.5k sustained dps. I heal for around 880hps standard. This already completely negates your off burst damage. With troll unguent, I heal for around 1900 hps for 10 seconds. If you are doing 2k dps burst for 4 seconds, this means at the end of your burst, you have effectively acheived less than 1k damage to my character during your burst, if I havent evaded a majority of it using my built in evade skills which is unlikely. However my TU lasts longer than your burst, and the excess heal from TU will quickly negate that damage as well. TU has a 10 second downtime, so effectively, for 10 seconds I have 880HPS and then I go straight back to having 1900 HPS. So thats all your damage negated, while having superior sustained damage, condition cleanse, access to multiple evades and CC available to me. Your burst is on cooldown and I can continue to do 3.5k dps, and outheal your damage and my heal has an extremely short cooldown/downtime. You might be able to last a little over 30 seconds against me if you use your heal, but you can’t outheal my damage and I will eventually wear you down.

Cufufalating.8479:

And yes, I do consider 9k damage over 4.5 seconds acceptable. Any fight worth considering a fight will last more than 30 seconds and ultimately your average DPS will be less than 1k / second throughout a fight. So if you have a setup which can be doing at LEAST 2k / second (since RF has a low DPS compared to most skills) that is actually not that bad.

See thats the problem… Yes 2k per second might be acceptable damage for a bunker or tanky character as SUSTAINED damage… meaning, you are constantly doing 2k dps… all the time. The 2k dps in this build is BURST damage which unfortunately rely on high cooldown signets, and once all the cooldowns have been popped, it will be a while before you can “burst” again, in the meanwhile, when your on cooldown, your doing roughly around 500 dps.

Glass characters average around 4k DPS, and if they burst, this can go up to 6-10k dps for the short duration of their burst which is more than likely on a shorter cooldown rotation than your signets are.

Most bunkers can easily maintain a constant 2k+ sustained DPS throughout the duration of a fight while still outhealing and out defending your damage. You may temporarily be on par with their damage during your burst, but they will out heal you, then out damage you when your burst is on cooldown.

I dont know who your fighting that averages 1k dps… are you exclusively hunting uplevels in wvw?

Cufufalating.8479:

I think I am going to lose the will to live if one more person comes here and says “You can do more damage if you take full zerker@!££!!!!”.

It’s not just zerker… you could do more damage with knights and be basically just as tanky… you could do more damage with any setup involving condition damage AND be able to set up for much more effective defences.

PTV is essentially training wheels until you figure out what you want to do, or for world bosses that dont take crit damage and are dificult to complete. If you want survivability, pick something with healing power & toughness. If you want raw damage, both conditions and power/crit are viable if you min/max. If you want something hybrid (tanky with damage) you have to find an optimal balance, and unfortunately, the majority of the time this does not include power, but condition damage… which scales off 1 stat, not 3.

most of what others are saying is true here… bearbow seems common in open world.

As for dungeons, rangers can be an EXTREMELY useful addition if built right, and is with an optimal party.
The best DPS/utility for dungeons is 4/5/0/5/0 using S/x (Wh mainly for burst & blast/buffs, but axe can be used for reflect in some situations, and dagger for extra dodges *cough*subject Alpha*cough*). Torch can be used for the fire feild used to stack might but only if no one else in the party can provide a fire feild which is unlikely. Offhand is generally GS, and occasionaly longbow for the rare situations that require ranged attacks in dungeons.

Id say the ranger meta dungeon build can be in the top 4 damage depending on if the rest of the party is optimal.

The major benefits of the meta dungeon build is the use of spotter and frost spirit. Only the ranger can provide these and these buffs are exclusive to the ranger and greatly benefit the whole party. Spotter gives the whole party roughly a 7% increase in crit chance, while frost spirit, when traited, gives the entire party a 7% damage boost.

With 25 stacks of might/vuln in the right party I find myself critting for 5k + autoattacks with sword, coupled with quickness you will do a full rotation in about a second (3 attacks) for around 15k damage. Couple this with WH burst and your doing even more damage while still autoattacking through the channel of WH burst.

If your party is optimal, ranger can be extremely dangerous in dungeons. If your party is not, you will only do average.

Egret.9374:

This build is really good also before the patch. In my opinion 20 point in the first line and signet of the hunt aren’t the best thing. I play a similar build but with 10 point in first line and 20 in the third line (protection on doodgeroll, recharge off hand skill faster). Then you have speed often from warhorn and 100 toughtness and cond damage. You can change signet of the hunt with other survival skill or other signet ecc. In wvw roaming i play this build with dywana rune for perma regen like beastmaster and it work because of permafury

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNBlYDbkRlWWLZxjFuWEIIUrCgm1QyyKBcnv3wXfxKlIB-TJRFwAAuIAJeCAp2fwaZAA

That build isnt too bad, I used something simmilar at one point for the lulz, however I used MH axe and swapped zephyr for sharpening stone, and bleed duration sigils instead of the on swap ones.

You chill your enemy with axe 3 to soft CC them, CotW for fury/swiftness, pop sharpening stone, Hunters call then when your point blank, axe 2…. then sit back and watch them get 25 bleed stacks in 2 seconds. Then switch to SB for sustain condi if theyre not dead.

The reason this happens is because between the first few hits of hunters, and your axe 2, you should burn your util slot sharpening stone which is already 10+ stacks. by the time they get to 75% hunters call is usually about half way through, so between the rest of hunters call and your AA you should quickly stack on the rest of those bleeds (another 5). On top of that, the whole time this is happening the majority of your crits are also adding more bleeds from sigils/traits and you have increased bleed duration from runes and traits keeping them on.

With basically max condi damage, its hard for anyone to survive 25 bleed stacks even if it does only last a few seconds. Even after that though, you can maintain somewhere between 5-12 with your shortbow depending on your positioning.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNBlYDbkRlWWrZxgFqWEIIULDg5tVNwKBcnv3wXXyKiC-TZRFwAAuAAJOCADeIAp2fwaZAA

This works with both Rampagers and Rabid. Rampagers will get them down a little quicker due to the increased power, but you will have more survivability with Rabid.

shadowpass.4236:

>.> I keep saying, im not planning on using this, im just trying to max the damage I can put out in full soldiers… this was just to show that you can deal a good amount of damage in full soldiers on a ranger…

P.S. 9k rapid fire is not a “good amount of damage”. i can easily do 16k+ with autoattack + quickening zephyr with full zerk in the time it takes for you to channel your rapid fire
or 10+k damage in that same time on my condi spam build WITHOUT popping my condi burst OR flanking which would both increase the damage even more, while also having superior defence to yours.

Belzebu.3912:

But both a cond ranger and warrior can have a even better survivability with similar to better damage.

^^ this.

Firstly your not optimising your traits well. You have a trait that only affects 1 utility skill. Wilderness knowledge can be a great trait to pick up, but is only worth taking if you have 2-4 survival skills on your bar. Strength of spirit can be a good skill to pick up, however only scales well if crit chance and damage is involved, otherwise the extra damage it gives will make a minimal difference.

Secondly, power builds require precision/crit damage to be effective. The base damage you are doing with a pure power build without crit will never be enough to make a significant impact in any situation. The increased defence in your build (which doesn’t include healing power) is only going to prolong your inevitable death.

Also, if you are aiming to be using primarily a longbow, you shouldn’t need nearly as much defence. The point of a longbow is to outrange your enemy, so if you are good with positioning and situational awareness, the majority of the time, you should be attacking from a range from which your enemy can’t hit you, meaning the majority of the time you shouldn’t be taking much damage.

Ive recently theorycrafted a condi build using rabid with sb s/d which averages about 600 damage per crit on a heavy target (warr/guard), with 50% crit chance base, 70% with fury. sb hits about twice per second, so thats about 1200 dps (give or take) with nothing in power… NOT factoring in conditions yet. I have bleed on crit sigil, bleed on crit trait, and bleed duration sigil. Standard, I maintain 800-1200 bleed tick, which if cleansed I can reapply within 3 seconds. If im flanking, my bleed tick can go up to around 1700. If I pop bleed burst (sharpening stone) it EASILY goes above 2000 bleed tick and more again if im flanking. All while having 2 stun breaks, including an immob break/stun break evade and condition cleanse in 1 move, 2 ACTIVE condi cleanses total which clear 2 conditions each.

If I switch to s/d because im in melee range I have a bunch of evades for defence on top of my high armour rating, have higher base raw damage than SB, which means i also crit for more than I would with sb, apply almost as many bleeds as with sb, and have perma poison, which with the poison master trait, ticks for just under 400 per tick.

In short, average direct damage + VERY impressive condi spam/damage + high defence

If you want to go for a power build, you need to spec hard into prec/crit damage to make full use of your damage coeficients, otherwise it is just not worth it. If you want to min/max damage VS survivability, your much better off going conditions, either with apothecary (more defensive) or rabid (more offensive).

The main problem with your build is it is a 1 trick pony. In a 1v1 situation if your “burst” doesn’t work, and youve popped all of your cooldowns, you are most likely going to die, because either

A) You are going against a high defence bunker, who will kill you through attrition, because you have no healing power, and he does, and he will wear you down and easily heal through your damage.

or

B) You are going against a burst/damage dealer who will burn through your health pool before you get a chance to do enough damage to kill him. Additionaly, many burst characters have defensive mechanisms built into their build which will let them dictate the pace or reset the fight (theives – stealth/mobility, mesmers – clones/mobility/stealth, warriors – mobility/CC)

@ Dave Theives have given me some trouble, I will admit. In the circumstance you stated, generally I am unable to continue assisting mid point and have to get out if I am focused by a burst theif. I can usually stay alive long enough to get back to home point where home point bunker can help defend and ward off the theif while I heal, but sometimes I dont make it back. And usually, If i go back to mid later, the theif will most likely be back very soon. I found though many team comps dont include theives and have found that this build shines for its designed purpose without a theif on the opposing team.

I will have to do some testing with sic em the next time I come up against a theif with this build, and might possibly switch out a utility in the circumstance that a theif is on the enemy team. I have found sic em to be incredibly successful in wvw against theives in combination with rapid fire and barrage, or GS if you know they are hanging around close by.

I never said it was the perfect build and I dont expect it to become the new meta by any means, although I do think I did a pretty descent job with it and is effective at its purpose in most situations. Also I do think the new traits are a step in the right direction in opening up new roles aside from bunker for rangers. I am just a little tired of playing an auto regening bunker thats basically autopilot once you learn the rotation. I preffer active/reactive playstyle rather than basically spamming the same rotation no matter the situation.

I may have to try some variants maybe focusing more on conditions/toughness using shortbow coupled with either s/d, s/t, a/d or a/t, and trying out possibly rabid gear and the new poison master trait in WS. Not sure what runes to use with this setup yet though. This setup would be a lot more robust defence wise and would allow for combat on point with the increased survivability. I dont know, im thinking out loud here. I kinda just want a good tPvP build that incorporates a bow and a more active playstyle. Getting real tired of A/D S/T autoheal/cleanse.

It’s fairly subjective honestly, based on your team comp, playstyle and strategy. We already have a spirit ranger, 2 guards and a warrior or mesmer. The benefit of the ranger zerker is that you have the advantage of range and can actually provide significant support in teamfights. The theif does provide more damage this is true, I am not going to argue that, but the theif has to be in melee range to do that damage, and has minimal CC. In teamfights on point there is generally a lot of cleave or AOE going on, meaning it is a very dangerous place for a theif to be regardless of if he is in stealth or not. This limits the theifs role and ability to assist in larger team fights as he will most likely go down if he stays on point and cannot cap or decap while in stealth. While I may not provide as much burst as a theif, I can still apply my damage safely on point with additional control.

This build essentialy allows me to fill a theifs role, addmitedly, not doing quite as much damage, but still getting the job done, while also being able to support in a teamfight.

Having run several variations of condi specs for nearly 2 years, and with the 50% nerf to condition damage in PvP, I can assure you, you wont be doing anywhere near the damage of a full power/crit build. Especially with the condi meta being so prevelant, most well composed tournament players should have a few effective condi cleanses meaning most of your damage will be negated quickly once they realise they have conditions. Lets assume a 700 bleed tic, a 200 poison and a 400 burn (this is being extremely generous considering the nerf). thats 1300 per second damage. A condition cleanse will negate a majority of that damage. You may be able to reapply some of those conditions, but not as much as your initial burst, since most of your skills will be on cooldown. You wont be able to apply that same level of condition damage until your rotation is completely off cooldown. By then, the enemy has most likely saved a second condi cleanse waiting for the second burst if he is smart, and once again, a large portion of your condi damage is completely negated.

Meanwhile, my longbow on average crits between 2-3.8k at 1.5 attacks per second, or 2 attacks per second with quickness. thats (roughly) between 60% and 280% more damage per second than you at peak condition damage without quickness. Add an extra 50% damage when quickness is activated (roughly 110% – 330% damage). All of this being direct damage, which cannot be cleansed or cleared.

There is no point trying to fill roles that other players on a team can already do. This build just gives the ranger another alternative role to fill other than bunker/spirits. I know what other ranger builds do, I ran bunker BM and spirits for nearly 2 years. This is just another alternative role that the ranger can fill without being pidgeonholed into bunkering. Build variety improves the quality of tPvP and MMOs in general. There will never be a build that can fill every role for tPvP, otherwise there would be serious balance issues and QQ. This build just provides an alternative to the current meta ranger builds on the other end of the spectrum, for people who may not like to bunker and enjoy more active gameplay while still serving a purpose in tPvP.

If our spirit ranger is away or cant play, I will gladly play spirit ranger for the team, but if that role is already filled, I would rather fill another role than just add another spirit ranger to the comp and this build has proven to be viable and effective for its purpose.

for roaming you are better off going for toughness/healing power, and either power or conditions depending on your build, so Apothecary or clerics. Healing power scales really well and we have a few supportive traits that benefit greatly from healing power. Bang for buck I would say Apothecary/conditions. More effective than power. There are a few great roaming bunker/bm builds that are very effective that use apothecary. Power is still viable but less optimal.

Zerging I would have to disagree with most people so far and say you are better off either going full zerker, full knights or a mix. If you are a ranger in a zerg, generally you shouldn’t be frontline, you should be back line or flanking using longbow, so getting hit shouldn’t be an issue, and if the enemy zerg is somehow destroying the backline, it most likely means that your frontline was wiped and you have lost the fight anyway, or you were successfully flanked, at which point you have probably also lost the battle.

Unless you want to be a frontline melee only tank, but at that point you should most likely use another class for this role as warriors and guardians are much better at this than rangers.

Tragic Positive.9356:

1; That means it isn’t exactly made for tPvP.
2; This also means you are not helping with the objectives. (points > dmg)
3; This build has very nice mobility – that’s for sure. But your skirmishing is only mediocre. You don’t provide enough burst, you are too squishy, you are not able to kill any bunker with this build, it’s easy to LoS your shots away from points, and you are VERY EASILY focused.

What exactly is the point of this build? Steady DPS is not much needed in tPvP unless you are capping a point – which you can’t with this build.
Roaming is not needed if you can’t take a point.
If you are only giving a helping hand to your teammates while providing zero objectives yourself … That’s not a competitive build.

I’m aware of the potential of this build. I used to run a similar one myself. But it’s definitely not made for tPvP … Solo arena – might be a better scenario where people actually rush for levels – which is ideal with this build.

I think you misunderstand the role this build is supposed to fill. This isn’t supposed to be a solo/roam build but more of a team damage support build. I am basically able to cover 2 adjacent points at any given time with support. I can be supporting multiple players on my team who are assaulting mid with extra damage and CC, while usually staying completely safe, and if the enemy decides to rush our home, I can be back within range to help home bunker within 10 seconds.

I have killed plenty of bunkers with this build and my guild tournament team seems to think its a highly effective build. I think you underestimate the damage this build is able to provide. Sure it may not be backstab theif spike damage-like, but 3-4k Longbow Auto Attacks coupled with quickness plus pet damage are a pretty lethal combination and can melt through a health pool really quickly.

Sure, I am easily focused by a group, but if your playing smart, you shouldn’t be anywhere near the attack range of a group with this build. If they decide to try focus me, theyre going to have to come off point to do so allowing my teammates to backcap, and with my mobility and range i can kite for days. So while I may not be standing on point doing damage, I am still doing damage and CC – on point. So enemy players have a choice. Either they stay on point and continue to take damage and CC from me, while still dealing with my teammate/s who ARE ON POINT, or they try focus me, forcing them OFF POINT allowing my teammates to backcap.

So far, the only partially accurate statement that you have made is that I cant cap a point. Its true I can not sit on a point and hold or bunker it, but I have 3-4 other teammates who can fill that role. While I may not be able to solo or hold objectives, my mobility and range allow me to support virtually 2 points within seconds of each other.

Say theres a 2v2 on mid point, I can be there within seconds and provide damage and CC from a safe distance. While it may still technically be a 2v2 on point, my teams damage just went up to a 3v2 while one player (me) is completely out of harms way. Which team is more likely to win that fight? Or say home bunker is holding up against an enemy but doesn’t quite have the damage to take him out. I rush back and smash the crap outta that guy, and then get back to supporting mid. How is this not helping with objectives? While I may not be directly standing in the circle actively capping a point, I am helping my teammates to acheive this, and we have enough skilled point holders in our team, so why not include a damage/support role instead of just another bunker.

If our team comp already consists of 3-4 people who can successfully hold a point solo, it would be redundant to have more players able to hold a point solo, as there are only 3 objectives on the map to hold anyway. It doesnt hurt having teamspeak either and being able to communicate quickly.

90% of situations you are better off having 1-2 players in your team comp that are supportive roles. Sure full bunker is viable and can be quite effective, but its super cheezy, and as I stated, im sick of playing bunker builds.

It entirely depends on your team comp and individual playstyle, but so far my team has found great success with this build in the team comp. Dont knock it till you try it

Defence/mobility:

Weapon wise, you have GS which is arguably the best defensive weapon available to the ranger. It has swoop which is great for map mobility and engage/disengage.
Longbow has #3 which is a stealth. The stealth isnt long, but can be the difference between life and death in many situations. The knockback can also be used defensively if an enemy is getting too close.

The traits and utilities I have chosen primarily focus on defence. The new Nature magic GM trait means that all survival skills cleanse 2 conditions on use. This build can support up to 4 survival skills (although this is not optimal). The wilderness survival minor reduces the cooldown of survival skills meaning you will have access to these skills more often as well as active condi cleanse. I have also included a trait which is great against spike/burst damage. It gives the player protection when hit by a certain threshold of damage. This is great against glass theives or warriors trying to spike you.

Lightning reflexes is essential for this build. It provides a stunbreak, immob break, evade and shoots you back aprox 900 units of distance, as well as being a condi cleanse. This is a great defensive tool in situations where you might get stuck in melee or attack range and are taking too much damage, or any time you are stunned/immob or need a condi cleanse.

I find the defence in this build to be quite sufficient and supprisingly effective. It is a much more active style of defence as opposed to the passive defence of bunker/regen, but find it to be more rewarding, and allows for a much more robust and effective damage build.

SotH is higly reccomended over muddy terrain in 3rd slot as it allows for better mobility and effective kiting. Muddy terrain is viable but have not found it to be optimal.

Alternate options:

RaO swapped with entangle for more CC and Condi removal on a shorter cooldown.

SotH swapped with Muddy Terrain. More CC/condi removal, however less mobility which makes kiting much less effective.

Sigil of force/strength swapped with Fire/air. More burst with fire/air, more sustain and trait synergy with force/strength.

Wolves swapped with Felines. More DPS from felines, More CC from Wolves.

Control:

You have plenty of control with this build, from skills to pets. You have access to knockdown, knockback, chill, cripple daze fear and immobilise (depending on elite, utility and pet choice).

Longbow has several handy forms of control. Longbow 4 is a great tool for knocking people off point. Use this in both home point defence and when helping teammates assaulting mid/far point when enemies are actively defending on point. As stated before, Barrage doubles as a cripple, and is good for slowing enemies down within the AOE radius, meaning they will take more damage.

Greatsword also has a few handy control options in its skillset. Greatsword 5 is a daze, which is particularly useful for interrupting enemy stomps. Greatsword 4 is primarily a block, and a great one at that, but in a pinch, can also be used as a 900 range cripple when double tapped.

Pets also provide a great amount of control, while also dealing descent damage. With twin wolves you have access to on demand fear and chill. Fear is another tool particularly useful for getting enemies off point and stopping enemy stomps. Wolves also consistently knock enemies down and cripple them which are both great forms of control. Finally snow wolfs chill is a great on demand soft CC if you need to slow an enemy down and the pet is near them.

I alternate between RaO and Entangle as an elite but Entangle is another great form of CC that you can use in this build and synergises really well with the traits I have chosen. (see defence)

Hi. So i have been playing around with some stuff and I seem to have come up with a pretty descent power/crit based build using some of the new traits. I wanted to come up with a good build that used longbow with a melee option as a swap, as I was getting bored with bunker/condi spam builds. I have been using this build in tPvP since the new trait update with minor tweaks and I have been pleasantly supprised with the results.

Here is the build link.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJATRjMqUyaLLGsw1ag9gadAUAndrhw9WcwtdBnqA-TJRBwAUuEAP3fgcZAAPBAA

I used to run BM/Condi bunker and spirit ranger, but found the playstyle quite boring and a little too safe. This build doesn’t have the autopilot healing of bunker BM or Spirits but has quite a lot of active defence built in, meaning if you are proactive with your dodging and evade skills, you can mitigate a good amount of damage. This does not mean however that you should expect that you can facetank on point in melee against 2 opponents. Remember you are using the zerker amulet so you are technically “squishy” This build is based around doing great direct damage, providing good control, and having good mobility.

Basically, the role of this build is to roam/skirmish/defend. I usually roam between home and mid, mainly assaulting mid, and returning to home point when homepoint bunker is being overwhelmed. The big advantage of this build is the 1500 range, and increased velocity. This means you can do substantial damage to targets from a great distance while staying at a safe range. The increased velocity means that even at max range, its almost impossible to dodge the LB attacks, unless you actually physically dodge or use an evade as opposed to just strafing to evade without the velocity trait on. This build also incorporates a good amount of mobility with GS and SOTH, and has a lot of built in active defence, making it a perfect roaming/skirmishing build.

Damage:

The majority of your single target damage will come from longbow auto attack, which is quite substantial at max range. Take into consideration your positioning also, as positioning can give you a HUGE advantage on certain points/maps

Damage wise, LB AA is superior to rapid fire, with the exception that you are closer than 500 range. Consider this also when using Quickening zephyr.

Your ranged AOE is barrage. Barrage is great for applying pressure on point to multiple targets and doubles as a soft CC (cripple). It is also useful for theives trying to hide in refuge.

Depending on the situation, consider using Quickening zephyr before casting barrage, as it reduces the channeling time, which allows you to become mobile a lot quicker, and you should still have a few seconds of quickness after barrage is done to get off a few AAs.

Rapid fire is mainly used against theives when they are getting low, as rapid fire tracks theives in stealth. It can also be used as a short range alternative (below 500 range) if you happen to be stuck in longbow and weapon swap in on cooldown.

Greatsword can be a good damage option if you have enemies who happen to be in melee range. It is not recommended to intentionally go into melee range but if you find yourself in a situation where you are, GS is your best option. Maul does substantial burst, has a short CD and GS AA does descent sustained and cleaves. The AA’s built in evade also means that 1/3 of the time you are evading so this helps with defence.

I like using sigil of strength because this build crits a lot, and one of the traits in the build makes you and your pet do %5 more damage when you have any boon. Having easy access to might makes this almost a constant. (check alternative setups for alternatives if you dont like this option)

I wouldn’t worry too much about builds, weapons and pets at lower levels. If your happy with your bow and your bear just keep using it.

Once you get to level 80, I’d start looking into builds and such depending on what your doing, and depending on your play style.

Felix makes some good points in his post.

In pve, melee and DPS is king and is technically the better option. Although some situations like certain fights in high level fractals it’s good to have a ranged option. Sword/warhorn is the highest DPS set for a ranger, but sword takes a little getting used to.

The WVW meta is heavily centred around conditions and survivability especially if you’re roaming, and so is spvp.

There are different pets for different situations. Cats and birds for raw DPS, canines and spiders for control, bears/drakes/devourers for tanks etc. you can have 2 pets that you can swap between in combat, so if your first pet is getting low or is dead, you can swap to your second. Out of combat you can swap these out for any pet you have tamed.

I will say though, play the game how you want to play it. If you like the feel of a weapon/pet or the function of a utility, use it. However, keep in mind that there are “optimal” weapons, skills, pets and builds for everything. It all depends on what kind of player you are.

If you just like to casually do dungeons and PvE with some friends, use what you prefer. On the flip side, if you want to min/max DPS and like to speed run stuff, there are a few very good builds for rangers in dungeons and fractals. (Brazil’s Ranger DPS guide)

The same goes for WVW. If your just casually running around with a group of friends, play how you want and use whatever gear you want. However, if you want to be good at roaming solo, or in small groups, there are a few different builds that work exceptionally well (faux’s RRR build). If you prefer zerging, there’s a bunch of different builds that work well there too. (Not sure of these, I don’t Zerg much, but when I do I run a power/longbow/great sword build.)

It all comes down to what you like to do in the game and what kind of player you are. If you are more casual or not too serious, figure out what you like and stick to that, whether it be tankyness/DPS/condition/ranged/melee. If your a min/max er, there’s plenty of builds available for dungeons, wvw and spvp.