Guild Wars 2

I current have a set with mostly exotic magi and some cleric’s.

I want to start working towards ascended gear, but I don’t know what the most general-purpose gear would be. I don’t know exactly how necessary magi’s is, since I’ve heard people say that it heals way too much to be practical. Also, I’ve personally felt that the staff healing is very weak, even with magi. So I’m not sure if I should work towards magi / viper / berserker.

The stats on the ascended armor can be switched, but I’m also worried about trinkets, weapon acquisition, possibly nightmare runes, etc.

So what’s the most general-purpose set I should work towards?

in PvE, that is

All staff druids seem to be using sword/axe. Axe offhand has higher damage than warhorn, but seeing as your build equipment Magi’s/Cleric’s your damage is basically irrelevant anyway, so it shouldn’t matter.

Meanwhile warhorn provides better vuln stacking, and Call of the Wild, which seems particularly good since support Druids don’t run Markmanship to get Clarion Bond. You also have Windborne Notes to reduce warhorn skill’s cooldowns.

What axe has over warhorn in terms of utility is the projectile reflect and the pull on 4, but how important is it?

I always thought it was weird, thematically, that a greatsword does less damage than a sword.

Maybe you can justify making it slower and thus lower dps, but its attacks should hit more, because it’s literally a two-handed sword.

I don’t have a PvP perspective, but it seems like pets are a huge limiting factor in PvE because they allow the ranger to divert aggro. It seems like a lot could be changed if pets couldn’t be aggro’ed.

Ranger should have better synergy with bows, the Marksmanship tree is pretty mediocre.

The Druid spec is interesting, but it really is just for healing. When you think of Druids you think of some connection with nature, and the Druid spec doesn’t really accomplish that well. More emphasis on the nature aspect of the Ranger would make it more interesting, I feel.