Guild Wars 2

Frosty and Frosty Law Firm.4981:

2. In PvP we’re a bad joke. Nonsensical weapon design makes DPS builds with the longbow outright useless besides barrage. The only builds I can honestly give credit for in PvP are bunker and trap as the others are just enticing other professions to smash you for badges. If they don’t succeed at smashing you for badges, they’re simply bad players and should feel bad.

Badges? PvP? You are talking about WvW and not everyone is solo roaming in WvW. LB works in groups.

rynkusu.2035:

Plus if you’re just spamming the basic on the short bow, you’re not using it to it’s fullest potential. You have an attack gives you an extra evade, poison damage, an interrupt, and of course a crippling effect. If applied correctly the short bow can be tactically used.

Long bow on the other hand, I just keep it for the AoE it has, outside of that the dps isn’t that great compared to short bow, and the rest of the skills on long bow list take forever to cool-down.

OP was talking purely of DPS. I know how and where to use the other skills, but they don’t make the DPS much better.

Long bow on the other hand, I just keep it for the AoE it has, outside of that the dps isn’t that great compared to short bow, and the rest of the skills on long bow list take forever to cool-down.

Not everything takes 10 seconds to kill you know.

I’ve been using Search and rescue, but it fails about 70% of the time if not more, so using Spirit of nature would probably be much more better even with that long CD.

StoneWolf.7930:

i’m not saying that, but for a ranger to use a bear+longbow in any trait distribution you will not be better for any team. the dps is poor and if you trait for any survivability the dps is horrendous. just using healing spring will help the group, but you also need to bring some damage to even make it worth the time.

Okay.
The Longbow isn’t really bad if you stay at max range, which isn’t all to difficult if you have an area to move in.
Sword is nice but it has somewhat slow response time which is really annoying and going melee isn’t always a good idea nor possible.
Shortbow at bosses is pretty boring since you just basically use skill #1, unlike LB which has much better burst abilities.

Now that’ve been said, I use SB, LB, Axe/Sword+Warhorn, GS in groups depending on the dungeon, boss, area, etc. A mix of knight armor with berserker and Cavalier gives a good mix of both survivability and DPS, so I wouldn’t say that I have horrendous damage.

Ok, thank you. I guess it would be strategically better to use it when players are downed rather than setting it up prematurely in a dungeon, like with the other spirits.

Oh here comes an other one who thinks that doing most damage in a group is the only way to support it.

I was doing CoF with a pug today, we had 3 dps warriors. About 50% of my time I did nothing else but rezing those fellas.. And here people come and tell to roll a warrior =/

P.S I didn’t get downed even once.

Edit: Also the reason why people use bear in groups (dungens e.g) cus they are likely to live longer than other pets, plus they have a condition removal on F2.

vespers.1759:

it’s not a generalization. most 80s don’t do PVE unless it is for the 100% map or dailies and then they are already geared and roll through it with zero fear.

Not exactly correct.
I do a lot of PvE beside dungeon. Farming orr, a lot of meta events in high level maps (and lower maps). So there’s other things to do in PvE beside map completion/daily.

Edit: You’ll also be surprised how many people do not do PvP/WvW.. Our guild has around 250 frequently active members and only a small portion of those do some kind of pvp.

Would anyone be able to explain this elite a little bit more, mainly its healing ability.
I went to a sparring are in the mist, it seemed that in order to get heal you had to be extremly close. When I was out of.. well maybe 400-600 units, I didn’t get any heal ticks. Is the area really that small?

What about the command? How big area does it search for allies and what is the limit of revived allies per command?

Chopps.5047:

I crafted Bolt with my main ranger, Faelwan. Forget the haters, play how you have fun. Why play ranger? Because it’s fun. Pure and simple.

This.

Hello! Thanks for sharing this build.

It has some basic ideas I’ve had behind building my Ranger (mixing survivability with damage). I was going to do a 20/15/30/0/5 with similar gear set up (knight mixed with Cavalier and few soldier) for PvE/WvW. Then I started using a BM build in sPvP 0/20/0/20/30, but using cleric instead, which I really grew very fond of and started thinking of transferring to my PvE build. Basically there are few things that leaves me undecided. Since you have made a similar build (BM build with Knight’s/Cavalier gear), maybe you could answer a few things that leaves me undecided.

1. I’ve been debating if BM builds with your sort of gear set up would be viable without any clerics. E.g using cleric trinkets and knight armor, though that would reduce your damage. So I’m debating for more dps or more healing power? Which would you benefit more from in this situation?
2. Kinda don’t want to give up Piercing Arrow trait in Marksmanship, but I guess it would be OK since they only pierce in a strait line anyway.
3. Still debating on weapon set. Since I like sword and horn. I understand the idea of GS for mobility. SB is great control tool and gives extra evades. But I’ve considered Axe/horn just for the extra range instead of SB (I just love horn :P). Ofc weapons can be swapped depending on situation. In dungeons and WvW I’d probably use different weapon set ups.

Nnekk.5806:

One bug that really bugs me (pun intended) is the auto-fire of the LongBow skill #1. I can stand at a specified range and hit a target with the #1 skill if I actively hit #1, but it will not continue with “auto-fire” afterwards, unless I move closer to the target. How much closer is not exactly clear since we have NO MEANS to discover how far away a target is(hint hint)! If I had to guess, I would say it’s around 1000 units of distance before auto-fire works.

This tells me one of two things.

One, I’m further away than 1200 “units” from the target and my use of the #1 skill should not have hit the target and I should have gotten the “out of range” notification.

Or, two, The “auto-attack” is not set to work at the maximum range and instead works at a closer distance only.

This is not just for LB but works the same with the other ranged weapons (I haven’t tested it on other classes though). I doubt it’s a bug since it’s not unique to LB. Maybe it’s a way for game to indicate that you are close to getting out of range. But it doesn’t change the fact that it’s equally annoying.

haxi.9038:

I’m tired of seeing posts like this.

You know what they say. Haters gotta hate.

Zenith.6403:

Now that I’ve played several professions and come back to Ranger, I find that a lot of the skills available are awkward to use. So basically there’s 5 lines of slot skills that can be used. Pet skills, Signets, Survival skills, Spirits and Traps.

All skills, as for any other class, are situational. Some are better than others and highly depend on your setup. But most can be fit in some sort of build and situation (pve, wvw, dungeons, pvp). Some are indeed not worth using. Still I won’t deny that many of our utilities would do good with some improvement.

Pet skills
For me these aren’t worth using at all, because my pet spends majority of any time during fight dead. Pets are good for one use of their special F2 ability at the start of the fight before they are knocked down.

I assume you mean shouts.
Search and rescue is great in dungeons, I always use this one. However it’s extremly buggy. The res rate is slow and range is small, but it works on dead players. I think if you let the pet die first and then send it out, it would be better so that pet doesn’t die and get interrupted while rezing. It seems to work sometimes at least.

“Sick Em” I’m currently using in my sPvP BM build, where the pets doesn’t usually die so much.

Signets
Signets are the best Ranger slot skills in my opinion, but even then their effects are odd for the Ranger role. Signet of the Wild has permanent spot on my bar for the 25% movement speed bonus it provides. Condition removal, health regen and toughness are quite passive bonuses. I like to use longbow from 1500 distance, so survival is not an issue.

I use signet of wild and resolve in my pvp build. Signets can also be great with 30 points in marksmanship to get the active effect on you for invulnerability, extra stability and more damage. Downside is the long CD. =/

Survival skills
Quickening Zephyr is another permanent skill on my bar for the fantastic Quickness it provides. Rest of the abilities are too passive (save for maybe Muddy Terrain) for a profession that outranges everyone else in a fight. Sharpening stone is worth considering if you’re specced to condition damage (I’m not).

I love lightning reflexes personally, great skill when you’re out of dodges. I like using Muddy Terrain in WvW.

Spirits
Spirits are interesting idea for stationary combat, like DPS’ing down a boss that doesn’t move. Spirit of Frost improves expected damage output by 3.5%. I haven’t done the math to figure out how many Might stacks that equals. Sun spirit gives a chance for 3 second burning every 10 seconds. Nice if you’re specced to condition damage.

Probably one of the hardest skills to use. However someone mentioned in an other post that they have 1200 range. So if you put them behind you for example on top of the wall when you’re defending a tower in WvW or at certain bosses where you know they will be out of reach for AoE. Stone spirit for example would benefit full group giving protection, same as frost for more damage. Spirits of Nature is really great, I wish it could be a utility instead with a bit lesser CD. :P (wishful thinking, heh).

Traps
I don’t get traps. You can only have a single one and it is disabled when you move away from it. Trap effects are mostly light damage with conditions. If the effects were actually worthwhile (like 3-4 second knockdown) then using them would have strategic implications. Another passive skill type that is basically just hoping your enemies make a mistake.

But they are great for condition builds. =/ Probably more or less necessary as well since our weapons make it hard to stack conditions. And trapper build is popular in spvp, great against thief especially. Though I’m generally not found of condition ranger by itself. Sun spirit btw would go handy with some trapper utilities.

Agadar.4931:

Shouts, signets, and spirits are bad. Traps are good when traited. All other skills (mostly LR, QZ and Muddy Terrain) are okay-ish. That’s the opinion of someone who has clocked 500 hours on his ranger.

And there you prove that playing a class X hours doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve learned how to use your skills.

I have 4 lvl 80 chars now with full exotics set (except for ranger). Mesmer, Engineer, Ele and Ranger. Mesmer was the first character I made and payed for about 4 months, til I re-rolled into ranger, then Engi, then ranger again, then Ele and now playing ranger again too.

Mesmer and Engineer are those I barely touch while I play Ele and Ranger equally much. So for those who usually say “ranger is a broken class, go play mesmer or warrior”. Well, guess what, been there, done that. I find ranger being much more fun and I am completely sick to death playing mesmer.

You can argue that that other classes can do what you do but much better, well maybe, but in the end it’s about having fun. I guess the thing with rangers is that I just love playing with bows…

Now let’s look at the argument of any other class doing everything better than ranger. There are 8 classes and most can go support, bunker, dps, control or some mix of those mentioned.. So if you only want to play pure DPS, should everyone play the class that statistically do highest numbers of damage? Let’s say it’s a warrior (although I don’t know for a fact, let it just be an example). Does that mean everyone who plays DPS on other classes are idiots because they are “less effective” compared to the warrior? Or lets take 2 warriors, one dps and one bunker and then a zerker Ranger. You cannot then say that the 2nd warrior is gonna be better than the zerker ranger DPS wise, because it’s obviously not true. Will you then say that playing bunker warrior is stupid because you should do more DPS than this ranger guy here and if you want to be bunker go play a guardian instead? So where will that lead us in the end..? You gonna kick both zerker Ranger and the bunker Warrior and take 2 more DPS warriors instead?

That just shows a very narrow minded game play and in reality that’s not how it works. I won’t deny there’s some elitist groups that only want warriors or mesmer for best dps. But you cannot simply compare a class to a class without taking into account the variation of builds.

An one more thing too. Even if you want to look at it purely statistically, reality is not so black and white. For example, I can’t even count how many times I’ve been the last man standing in a dungeon party saving us from whip at bosses (what is that close ranged dps warrior good for when he dies from AoE while I stand 1500 units away with my bow, safely and alive?). Nor can I count how many times I’ve beaten thieves, warriors, mesmers, etc, in pvp. There is always a skill level present and you cannot deny it. I hear many people argue that “well, this player is bad at his class, it doesn’t count”. But most people are more or less an average player (as well as me). Really bad and really good players are more of an exception than a rule. So you can show all the numbers and statistics and theory crafting all you want. But obviously rangers can work just as well as any other class despite their annoying bugs and broken pets.

Zaon.4367:

Guys stop waste time and gold to playing this useless class.
If you reroll another class you will see the really difference and how ranger class is broken

EDIT: example: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Mesmer-solo-s-WvW-Tower

Ooooh… So this is what the game is all about. Now I understand.. Thanks for explaining it so kindly.

Swoop on GS. Entangle works well to slow down enemies chasing you.

Btw, you can use Sword #2 twice. Turn camera 180, leap backwards, turn back 180 leap forward. But I’m sure you already thought of that :P

Hello! I just wanted to say that I’ve tried your build in spvp and like it very much. Although I’ve done some adjustments to it.

I went 0/20/0/20/30.
20 in Skirmisher duo to Pet’s Prowess and Agility Training.
I picked Enlargement instead of two-handed training.

I’ve tried it with Soldier’s Amulet, but now I’m running it with Cleric’s Amulet instead. With soldier I was somewhat squishy still. I was using Healing Spring since there was no condition removal, but cleric’s and Troll Unguent works so much better that I swapped QZ for Signet of renewal. At first I removed Signet of the wild for Lightning Reflex, but took it back since SoR gives both stun break and can cure all conditions if needed. I also use hoelbrak runes that gives might and reduced condition duration by 20% (still experimenting though).

For weapon I ended up with GS and Axe/horn. I’ve tried basically all combinations and was even running LB+GS. But decided that I needed range and I wanted to use both horn and GS so it was a compromise to get some range through Axe instead. Axe #3 also makes pet give weakness so kinda nice.

For pets I use Jaguar and Stalker (since it gives 5 stacks of might, 10 to the pet if traited). I’ve tried using one bird though, it does a lot of dmg too, sometimes it seem to do more than the cats actually? though I’m not sure..

I’ve tried BM build once before, though this is by far one of my most favorites ranger builds I’ve tried in PvP.

rahuri.7048:

Hi,

Rangers suck. Everyone knows it. One of the bigger problems with Rangers are their pets. The pets are weak and stupid, but it wouldn’t be balanced to give them a whole bunch of stats that make them overpowered.

Why not make an endgame trait that when you have your pet recalled (so it’s not summoned) you gain a percentage of it’s stats. Say, 25% of the pets primary stat? That’d be healing for Moas, precision for felines etc.

Rangers would be decent without pets, and not laughable. I think this change would be very welcome and hopefully bring the Ranger DPS in line with a warrior+rifle.

First of all .. There are 4 primary stats for all pets: power, toughness, precision, vitality. Healing is a secondary of which Moa has 0. And if the pet is dead, how is the trait gonna help you then?

One more issue, if it worked as you wish, 25% to power, precision, vit and toughness would be extremely OP and nobody would even care using pets anymore other than on passive mode. That kinda takes away the whole purpose of using pets.

And 3rd, why is everyone so obsessed with dps? You do realize that not everyone, no matter what class it is, is playing zerker/pure dps builds right? Do you hear anyone saying “oh wtf why isn’t my bunker guardian doing same damage as that backstabber thief!?”. And for those who want to play purely for dps, you realize also that in most mmorpg no class is going to do exact same damage as the other, right?

Now I do recognize the issue with the damage being spread between the ranger and a pet who tend to die, but in some situations, glass canons are not viable builds. In the end it’s about the last one standing, which more depends on your ability to survive and use certain skills properly.

Not a single condition removal. =/

What gear do you use? Runes?

Hmm. I think I’d pick Enlargement over two-handed training.

edit: 5x runes of the citadel might be nice

I did test it a week ago also as well as after the patch. it worked then as it works now. Bare in mind your pet has to be in combat and cannot be dead. I’ve only tried inside the mist though. I didn’t pay attention to it in open world, but I don’t see why it would be working differently. It ticks for 177 with compassion training.

You have to press it yourself.

Wanderer.5471:

It was 133 before patch. Compassion training didn’t effect the player heal and it was every 3 seconds pre-patch (or 1 for every 3 ticks of SoW). Haven’t tested since.

Yes it did.

I’ve tried spirits now in some matches in spvp. So far no one really seem to bother to even attack the spirits. However, I’m trying to place them in “odd” places, behind obstacle or on a higher terrain. Even 1v1 when the spirits are fairly close to me nobody even seem to care about them. Anyhow, so far my problem is not so much them dying as the long channel time for putting them up. Kinda annoying doing it in the middle of a fight. And idk, I just feel maybe for a condition build a regular trapper build would be better still.

Nothing has changed as for before and after patch, I’ve tested it recently. It always ticked per 2-3 sec. But it still bugs sometimes.

Hey thx for your reply.
Yes I also chose not to make them follow me since I preferred trait VII and VIII instead.
I actually went for x/x/10/30/30 and cleric jewel. So more healing, but I’m not all sure about it since the damage will be lacking big. I’ll just test around a bit with what I’ve got and what you’ve suggested.

I’m curios of your weapon choice there. Since you’ve doing a condition build, how come you went for greatsword? I’m also debating whether to use torch or dagger. I actually used dagger in my trapper build lately instead of torch for more CC, bleed and poison.

Hello, I’m looking for a spirit build for tPvP. I’ve seen a few rangers running it and I know there are some successful builds out there. So ya, if you were going to say “OMG Spirits Sucks Don’t Use It”, you may just not post at all.

So anyone who’ve been using them in pvp could please share some experience? I just wanted to try it, but not really sure what to focus on. It’s just when I look at their abilities, them seem a bit… too spread. There’s condition, swiftness, some CC, protection.. yeah. I guess it would be some sort of support build then, but my question is if there is possible to run it 1v1? I’m not sure if it’s good idea to use all 3 utilities for spirits either, since I’m probably gonna need some stun breaker or so as well.

Just wanted to try new builds and such, mess around a bit, so would much appreciate some advise on spirits.

My Sweet Lily.1952:

paleeshi.1924:

^^
….15characters….

Pls tell me that’s Wings of Dwayna and you are in PvE.

Yes….

And no. :P

I don’t know if this has been mentioned or if anyone even noticed but…

1. Quick Shot #3 shortbow doesn’t always let you jump backwards although I have no immobilize on me. Basically I just jump on the spot.
2. 2nd downed skill doesn’t always work, despite that target has no stability and I’ve completed the channeling.

^^
….15characters….

Holister.6394:

Hiya, I am a newish ranger and i’m keen to learn how this build has been working for you, it’s seems quite different and interesting versus the similar builds i have seen previously. Any chance of an update?

thanks

Uh, I actually went for an other build that I’m currently gearing my ranger for. It’s an all around build with high toughness, decent attack, crit and crit damage.
This is the final build: http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/ranger/?6|c.1p.0.g.1c.0|0.0.0.0.0.0|1n.7j.1n.7j.1n.7j.1n.7j.1n.7j.1n.a1|2u.0.2v.0.2s.0.1n.67.1n.67.2s.0|k68.f6.u67b.0.5|0.0|e
Here is the thread that describes it more closely, though the final gear set is in the first link: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/New-build-need-some-advice/first#post1499898

Reason for this was that I wanted a build that I could use in normal PvE, WvW and small scale WvW fights. So when I tried the signet build in sPvP I felt there were some things lacking and I started mixing with other utilities and traits.

Signet build was nice in the dungeons and is heavily focused on passive healing and pet survivability. The second build is more focused on survability and damage coming from you and isn’t as much pet focused. I felt that in the end the signets wouldn’t provide all the utilities I needed when going against players, but it works excellent in PvE though. I’m still using Signet of renewal.

Also an other reason why decided not to play this build is that although the pets get much better survivability, they will still die in certain situation, hence 30 points in BM felt a bit like a waste.

I feel it was a viable build but just not suited for certain situations, hence I decided to focus on other things.

I have tested Natural healing. It DOES affect the player as well. It heals for 133 base. It’s only affected by pet’s healing, which is a base of 0. However the Compassion Training in BM gives 350 Healing Power to your pet. This increase healing for player to 177 per tick. About once in 2-3 sec. If you don’t believe it, feel free to test yourself with a sparris in the mists Unless they changed it this patch though. I’ll have to check.

Edit: Yep, it still works as it did before. Bare in mind two things though. 1. Pet has to be in combat for it to work. 2. Your pet must be alive. But for some reason Compassion Training doesn’t seem to affect the the number on pet’s own heal – that is, it heals itself for 125 both with and without Compassion Training.

Great use of terrain there! Never though of using sword like that.

Well, it depends on how much you care about the skin and/or you have a particular skin you will be transmuting later. Putting that aside, I’d probably take the karma gear first (if you don’t need Karma for Legendary for example). 250k should be about enough for 6 pieces. If you don’t want to spend all the Karma, then TA is easy to get a group for. It can be somewhat frustrating sometimes though. HoTW path 1 is fastest path of those 3 and pretty easy as well, since the other two has under water bosses and people tend not to like going under water. But honestly. if you don’t care about the skin and don’t need the karma for anything in particular, 250k should give you a full set for Armor at least

I agree with what Dante said. Siamoth’s F2 is great, but it annoys me sometimes that it even fails to spawn a weapon from time to time. Sometimes when you need it quickly, it seems that piggy is taking all the time in the world finding that weapon. And sometimes it’s just too far off and you have to go in a different direction. In such case I find wolf’s Fear be more reliable.

I was trying some builds that could be good in small scale WvW and something I could use in PvE as well. Since sPvP is the only way to test it against players, I made this sPvP version and I’m really having a blast with it. I find it to be very successful 1v1 as well as in smaller groups.

Build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNBlYDbkoKyuxyvi1SQsUonA1ewJzjJ+BD9FcyKSwK;TsAA2CookyIlQKbROpkStIYUxGEA
(copy paste the link)

The only downside with this sPvP version is that Knight’s armor gives Vitality instead of Toughness, which is what I am aiming for in PvE/WvW (with a mix of few soldier pieces).

Some key elements in this build are the evades from SB and sword and Natural Vigor traits. You should get a lot fury through elite skills, lesser CD on 2nd horn skill, Beastmaster’s Bond and Furious Grip.
Pretty decent condition removals and two stun breakers. Signet of Renewal is really good here since it can be used both as an emergency condition removal as well as stun breaker. Basically a handy emergency utility Other than that it has pretty high survivability and very good damage output. For pets I use the somewhat standard Raven (purely for the damage and since it’s small and harder to target) and Wolf for the fear, knockdown and its decent survivability/damage.. 5 points in Beastmastery for quick stomps ^^

What I’d like to ask is what you guys think of particular runes, sigil and Sharpened Edge.
As for the bleed stacking, yes I do not have a condition build, but since I have high crit and #1 SB skill can stack bleeds, together with the trait and Sigil of Earth you could keep up maybe 8-10 stacks, which is additional 580 damage/sec (58 dmg per stack). That together with 600 crits gives you over 1k damage. Or would you say that Sigil of Earth would be enough and I should get the 30% movement speed for pets instead, since they tend to be a bit slow?

As for Runes, in PvP I use mesmer since it’s only one that gives both power and precision. I might do the same for PvE, but I have considered Runes of Infiltration which give total 10% more damage to foes below 50% HP, precision, and mainly the 90sec stealth at 10% HP. This is for the oh-kitten situations as well. Unfortunately it has 90sec cd though.

Would much appreciate some advice here and thoughts on this build ^^

@OGDeadHead: Well I haven’t tried it out much yet, so I want to test it first. But you are probably right that ranger benefit more from swapping.

Updated the 2nd post about Natural healing trait. It DOES give passive heal to yourself as well and it scales with pet’s healing power so Natural healing and Compassion Training goes really well together.

Master’s Bond: Your pet has a bond with you that increases its attributes each time you kill a foe. When it is defeated or deactivated, the bond is reset
Compassion Training: Pets heal for more
Natural Healing:Your pets have natural health regeneration

The reason why I went 30 in beastmastery is so that your pets gets more survivabilty through additional 300 points to all attributes, plus Natural Healing trait. Natural healing also gives passive healing for yourself. It heals for 133 and I’ve recently discovered that it scales with Pet’s healing power.

Altogether this helps you to utilize the pet skills for their support without having pets constantly dying. Keep in mind that you can put pets on passive to utitlize F2 when you need to keep your pet out of AoE and such. The same reasoning goes for the Master’s Bond trait. It gives a max stack of 25 and a 10% per stack for vitality, toughness power and precision (according to wiki). This means you should keep one pet as your main pet, since the stack will reset when you swap. And then swap when the pet dies or when it’s really necessary. Compassion training trait gives additional 350 healing power to the pet, so it helps the passive healing and the group healing (see further down). This trait improves passive healing for yourself as well as pet from Natural Healing.

Utilities:Signet of Renewal, Signet of the Wild, Signet of the Hunt/Signet of Stone. Rampager as One as elite skill. Healing Spring as healing skill.

The reason why I chose to make a signet build is because it’s very versatile. Trap builds are fun but it’s better for a condition builds (something I rather use in sPvP). Survival skills are something I usually ran with before, but I found signets to be more fun and they do bring more to the table imho. Let’s check them out a bit closer.

Signet of Renewal.Passive: Cures condition every 10th second. Active: Your pet pulls all conditions from nerby allies to itself. But even more importantly it’s a stun breaker! It has 48sec cd when traited, but it’s also one of the signets that don’t really benefit much from Signet of Beastmaster trait. Afaik the active doesn’t work on you. It should be used at your main condition removal if you have a lot of conditions on you. Elsewise it’s better to save it for the stun breaker and use your other condition removals (heal and pet).

Signet of the Wild. Passive: gives regeneration to you and your pet. Active: Your pet grows larger, dealing more damage, gaining stability. This gives addition passive healing to your pet as well as you. It heals the pet for 125 + 25% of player’s healing power and 62 + 6% healing power to you. The active effect can be used as an additional stability for 12 sec. It also makes you and your pet do 25% more damage when activated.

Signet of the Hunt. Passive: Increase speed by 25%. Active: Your pets next attack does more damage. The skill has only 24 sec cd when traited and gives the speed you otherwise lack. Active effect gives 50% more damage on your next attack. In dungeons however Signet of Stone could be considered more useful since it prevents you from taking any damage for 6 sec. The passive affect is kinda meh though, only giving you 35 thoughess and 120 to your pet.

Instead of a 3rd signet I like to use Search and Rescue inside dungeons, since it revives dead players as well. This is really useful when you can’t revive someone yourself. So in this build I swap between these 5 utilities mentioned above.

Pets: Main pet is Brown Bear because bears have higher survivability. It also gives regeneration to allies. I used Brown Bear mainly duo to F2 for the extra condition removal.

As secondary pet I would use Red Moa. It has fairly high health. F2 gives you an extra fury. The pet also has a heal.

I’d also suggest Fern Hound or Wolf. They have less health than the Bear, but more toughness and attack. Fern Hound gives extra regen through F2 and Wolf has fear which can be very useful.

Although I used 30 points in Beastmastery, I’d suggest using pets that already have high defense for dungeons. The pets in this build should provide support, so fairly high base defense and the traits and points in beastmastery should help you keeping pet alive and use it for group support.

So yesterday I played my long forgotten ranger in a dungeon for the first time and realized how fun this class actually can be, despite of what people say about ranger being a crappy class. Afterwards I came up with this build and I’d like to hear what people who’ve played rangers for a while think of this build.

Reasoning: This build is mainly for PvE and dungeons. I wanted to deal damage without playing a glass canon, so I tried to find a mix of traits/utilities and gear that would accomplish this. The combination of damage and survivability comes from utilizing the pets more as well as using them as an utility for additional damage and group support. Survability will come not only from the high amount of toughness, but also from passive heals from skills and pets. I also use signets because they are just great and can be used in so many ways. I honestly don’t know why people often complain about signets. I will explain all this more detailed further down.

Build links:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/ranger/?6|3.1c.h2|c.1c.h8.7.1c.h2|1n.71k.1n.71k.1n.71k.1n.71k.1n.71k.1n.71k|1n.67.1n.61.1n.61.1n.61.1n.61.cc.9c|u48b.0.0.a1.u24c|0.0|e (stats for PvE and traits)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAT8XjEV91JWCWs2Bi1DCFoB9egea1eXBQdyHuyK;TkAqhMDJGyOkbI5QrIGFsLA (utilities, traits, pets, etc).

Gear: As for now I chose to go for Knight gear and some Soldier gear (as in first link). You may chose to go for pure soldier but I wanted to get more damage out of the build. You should have an attack of around 3000 and crit chance of 29%. You gain additional 11% crit chance from max stack of Sigil of Minor Accuracy. You also get fury from your elite skill. Overall it gives decent crit chance as well as high base attack. Around 18200 health and almost 2800 armor.

Weapon: Okey, so here is the fun part. For this build I chose Longbow and Sword + Axe.

I know that many people do not like longbow, but I do like LB much more than SB so the main reason why I chose it is because I find it most fun weapon to play with. However it does as well provide much better burst damage than SB. You may if you want swap LB for SB.

As my second weapon set I chose Sword in main hand because it does decent damage and attacks quickly. You also have 2 evades on it and auto attack allows you to stack might for extra damage.
For off hand I chose Axe, why? Well you could either go dagger, which I choose not to because it’s more condition based. Warhorn is really good because of it’s second skill, however you already have other sources for fury and speed. Axe off hand has lower cooldowns over all. As well as doing more damage and being 2 combo finishers. 2nd skill does reflect projectels, which can be very useful.

Alternative: You can swap LB for SB as your ranged weapon if you do not like using LB. You can also swap it for greatsword in situations when you won’t be needing range. I do like GS as well so I’ll be using this weapon too in some occasions.
Instead of S/A you could go A/A if you want some more range. For example you could use GS and A/A, that would give you both close combat and range without any bow if you don’t wish to use one. Axe in main hand however does somewhat less damage than the sword.

Traits: 30/0/0/10/30

Now I will explain the reasoning behind my traits.

Signet Mastery: Signets recharge 20% faster
Piercing Arrows: All arrow attacks pierce targets
Signet of the Beastmaster: Active effects of signets also affect you

Signet Mastery is so you can use the active effect more frequently. You’ll be using both the active and passive effect however. I’ll explain this later. Piercing Arrows is really nice for the ”AoE effect”. If you chose not to equip bow, you can go for Beastmaster’s Bond that gives you fury and might when pet’s hp reaches 50%. Signet of Beastmaster will make signets affect you as well as pet. I will explain this further down.

Circle of Life: Create a healing spring on death.

This was personal choice for the remaining 10 points since 30 in Marksmanship and Beastmastery is mandatory for this build. It should be very useful in dungeons however.

Svarty.8019:

I wonder if there is a limit to the number of legendaries, or whether we will indeed all be using legendaries eventually?

The thing that is limiting amount of legendaries at current stage is probably the amount of precursor. Most other things can easily be farmed or bought since they have a big stock. However precursors are pretty limited. I think only yesterday there was only 2 The Legends in trading post. But even at one time I’ve seen around 20-ish at once. If you not going to buy it or get it as a drop, the only way to get it is Mystic Forge but the gamble can be endless. So… unless they drastically increase the drop rate of precursor or give other way to acquire it, the legendaries will still be “rare”.

Hello, I just have a question about sword off hand skill #1, the one that blocks foe. It says that it does 1466 damage (with my current gear). However i’ve tried it in spvp and it doesn’t come remotely close to doing such damage. I assume it’s either on a successful block or it’s the the phantasm doing it? Still I haven’t seen any high damage number coming from that skill.

I like the condition build, however our most “viable condition” is confusion which doesn’t work that well in PvE as in PvP and WvW. Since Staff provides random conditions it’s hard to stack e.g bleed. Phantasm can be good source to stack bleed if you build precision/condition. But I’ve found lately that shatter is still more effective at killing things than condition. Somehow killing people even in pvp with confusion stacking isn’t working as good anymore (maybe people finally learned not to use skills when they are confused). Even if you decide for running a zerker build, I’d still probably run with a staff since it gives an good defensive tool.

Personally though I got bored of playing mesmer in PvE due to the limitation in build options. And it’s just not as fun in PvE as in PvP.

I went for perception sigil. This gives me a base of 34% crit chance with max stack, on top of that you get fury as well. But I also went for crit damage (roughly at 60% atm). Since we get so many might stacks I’d prefer the higher crit chance instead.

What Ralloff said.

They die like a fly if you don’t spec into survivability, which means you will be lowering your dps.

Razor.6392:

I’d take the risk and waste 1 second every 20/25 than being completely vulnerable to burst damage.

Isn’t using glyph making you more vulnerable to burst then? If you read daphoenix’s post in this tread, you’ll see that he explained it pretty well. Using up the glyph you will have no heal available for the next 20-25sec (if we take water attunement out of the equation), while with signet not only do you receive constant passive healing, but you can always use its active effect in “oh kitten” situations.

This thread was made not to call out every signet user (obviously it works better in some builds), but to raise awareness on how glyph isn’t a bad choice at all! In fact it’s better than signet more often than not.

Well I don’t think people have really said that the glyph is bad by itself. In fact I’ve seen and know many eles who use this heal.

Glyph can fit on anyone, while signet is only truly effective on 30 arcana DD ele’s that are fairly tanky already.

And hence why so many else probably use the signet, since the tanky d/d build is probably one of the most common ones, especially in pvp.

Razor.6392:

Why do people bring up that SoR kills people faster? Is one second of cast time really the difference between killing people or dying to them?

Sometimes it is sometimes it’s not. Have you never died cause you were a millisecond too late to cast your heal? It happens, if not that often. Although that passive healing in such situation would probably not have saved you either. However, in solo PvE and easy WvW fights you barely need to bother to heal if you have the signet, since it provides you constant healing. Surely one second of cast time doesn’t take away that much of your killing time, but if you are gonna talk about efficiency how could you deny signet being more efficient over glyph when you don’t even need to bother with your healing skill?

Minion of Vey.4398:

So it’s no problem making a case for all 3 of them. You’re probably doing yourself a disservice actually by picking one. Much like a 30 water ele should switch back and forth between the 2 grandmaster traits (aura share or regen removes conditions) depending on situation, you should probably switch your heals as well.

Ether Renewel is really nice cause of its short cd. With my current Healing Power it heals for 5792, which is a ton for that short cd. I think it should make it very useful in fotm and other harder instances. However I would not prefer this heal in spvp or small scale/solo wvw. With it you could also change Cleansing Wave for Aquamancer’s Alacricity, powerful aura or even cantrip mastery since you get plenty of condition removals already. Yet somehow glyph ends up on the bottom of my list despite it’s boons.

Firegoth.6427:

paleeshi.1924:

I just dislike that the legendaries can be sold and that they are not account bound. I really don’t see why it would be so wrong to be able to use Bifrost both on my mesmer and elementalist after the hard job getting it. And the fact that it can be bought and sold jsut bothers me since legendaries should be something special. It’s a hard work to acquire it, then why should someone just be able to buy it on TP?

Would it make you feel better if they farmed the badges, karma and got world exploration 100%?

well it’s more than fair. since getting legendary requires you to play several aspects of the game and is not droppable. and for those who actually buy the weapon, how many of those do you think have bought the weapon through “legal gold”, considering the sky high prices for a legendary?

I just dislike that the legendaries can be sold and that they are not account bound. I really don’t see why it would be so wrong to be able to use Bifrost both on my mesmer and elementalist after the hard job getting it. And the fact that it can be bought and sold jsut bothers me since legendaries should be something special. It’s a hard work to acquire it, then why should someone just be able to buy it on TP?