11 replies to this topic

[Sterling Blackrose]

EDIT:  Build is now 30-25-10-0-5.  Cannot edit title to reflect changes

Hello fellow rangers!

After reading page after page of ranger information on builds and weapons, I have finally come up with a great build utilizing the longbow. Please give thoughts and feedback on what you would change or keep in this build.

Link to build: http://gw2skills.net...oySljKJVLRGQsJA

Race:  Human

Weapon Sets:  Longbow / Axe + Warhorn

Start each battle by using Axe + Warhorn for the buffs and birds
You will gain extra duration on swiftness and fury from weapon swapping minor traits.
Switch back and forth every 35 seconds to keep buffs up.

Pets: Brown Bear / Devourer

I chose the brown bear for its "Shake It Off" F2 ability.  In dungeons with 3 or more melee players, it helps bring condition removal to the party.  Has a range of 600.  bears can be useful in helping to absorb hits in melee range due to their high Vitality.

Pet choice can be situational depending on group make-up.  I like to bring one melee and one ranged pet.
Swap often to give Might buffs to your pets.

Utility Skills:
Healing Spring - direct heal + aoe regen + condition removal for allies
Quickening Zephyr - faster attacks
Prayer to Kormir (Human Racial) - removes 3 conditions from you
Signet of Stone - improved toughness for you and your pet.  Activate for damage immunity for your pet

For non-human Rangers, you can swap out Prayer to Kormir for another skill of your choice.

Elite Skill:
Rampage as One

Trait Lines:

Marksmanship - 30 points
Major traits -

(1) Steady Focus - damage increased by 10% when Endurance is full
(8) Piercing Arrows - All arrow attacks pierce targets.
(10) Eagle Eye - Increases longbow and harpoon gun range.  Increases damage by 5%

Pretty simple choices in MM tree.

Skirmishing - 25 points
Major traits -

(2) Sharpened Edges - Chance to cause bleeding on critical hits
(10) Quick Draw - Shortbow and Longbopw skills recharge 20% faster

I stop at 25 points in this line due to this build not utilizing traps. The extra 5 points is to pick up the minor trait "Hunters Tactics" to deal 10% more damage while flanking.

Wilderness Survival - 10 points
Major Traits -
(6) Wilderness Knowledge - Survival skills regenerate 20% faster
Makes QZ have a 48 second CD

Beastmastery - 5 points



Runes -
6 x Superior Rune of the Ranger
5 x Berserker's Jewels

Sigils -
Sigil of Superior Bloodlust - +10 Power per kill
Sigil of Superior Battle - Gain 3 stacks of Might (20 secs) when switching to this weapon
Sigil of Superior Accuracy - 5% critical chance

Amulet -
Berserkers Amulet

Rotation for this build:

Always start fights with Axe / Warhorn

Warhorn 5, then 4
Switch to longbow
Use Elite (RaO)
Longbow 3 (Hunters Shot for Weakness condition)
Quickening Zephyr
Longbow 2 ( Rapid Fire)
then auto shot until Hunter's Shot is off CD
Use HS and Rapid Fire again.

Using RaO before any LB skills makes you have Fury and Swiftness for 35 seconds.  Might for 15.
You will be able to use Rapid fire 3x during this time frame.  Huge increase in DPS.

I don't switch back to warhorn until QZ has 9 seconds left on its CD.  With the 10 second weapon swap, this allows me to use QZ, rapid Fire, and warhorn 5 skill together again.

With 48 second cooldown on QZ, you will be able to get off 3 sets of HS/RF before having to switch to second weapon set

Always make sure you use Hunter's Shot before Rapid Fire!

Rinse and repeat.

Edited by Sterling Blackrose, 28 September 2012 - 09:40 PM.

[Altephor]

I see you have sigil of superior accuracy on your horn.. does this give the bonus to critical even if that weapon is currently not out?  Been wondering this for a while.

[Bear Storm]

In my opinion, if this is solely for PvE, taking 5 point out of wilderness survival and putting it into Beast Mastery for the 16s swap is better.

[SlappedYak]

Bear Storm, on 23 September 2012 - 09:15 AM, said:

In my opinion, if this is solely for PvE, taking 5 point out of wilderness survival and putting it into Beast Mastery for the 16s swap is better.

5 points in wilderness for twice as much dodging as everyone else...every ranger should have at least 5 in WS

Personally, i would move away from a full 30 in marks (because the GM traits suck, the above build doesnt even use them so I would lose the (I) Steady Focus trait - i've never liked it, mostly because I'm a fan of dodging ) and pop the 5 in BM because 16s swap is pretty nice if you plan to utilise the swap buffs (and aren't using something like say, masters bond). I am a little confused as to why you put the extra 5 in SK for the flanking bonus, when longbow you rarely get to flank anything (particularly in dungeons) - I would associated the flanking bonus with SB more than LB?

[Sterling Blackrose]

Hey guys!  Thanks for the responses.

Altephor, on 23 September 2012 - 07:02 AM, said:

I see you have sigil of superior accuracy on your horn.. does this give the bonus to critical even if that weapon is currently not out?  Been wondering this for a while.

No it does not.  You can use a different sigil on the warhorn if you want to. With the 10 second cooldown on weapon swapping, you would gain 5% crit on the axe and warhorn skills until you're able to swap back to Longbow.

[Dixa]

Bear Storm, on 23 September 2012 - 09:15 AM, said:

In my opinion, if this is solely for PvE, taking 5 point out of wilderness survival and putting it into Beast Mastery for the 16s swap is better.

nah. it's not needed

better is 30/30/5/0/5. double condition damage on traps whic you need 30 in precision line to get. arrow piercing is a must and signet active effects working on you makes the 30s cd signet of the hunt a nice boost before you pop rapid fire/barrage. arguably the only place to pull 5 points out of would be power, but if you are using longbow you should have both piercing arrows and eagle eye and that requires 30 in the line

50% increase endurance regen is mandatory in explorables imo. there's enough randomness in fights that you may need that third dodge faster than if you did not have this trait

5 in bm only for the qz. faster swapping on pets is something i only wished i had one time - in my 40's, when i was soloing a stationary melee champion with two bears. never at any other time did i wish i had that, but i'm mindful of my pets and 90% of the time use only ranged pets on group content.

[Sterling Blackrose]

SlappedYak, on 23 September 2012 - 09:43 AM, said:

5 points in wilderness for twice as much dodging as everyone else...every ranger should have at least 5 in WS

Personally, i would move away from a full 30 in marks (because the GM traits suck, the above build doesnt even use them so I would lose the (I) Steady Focus trait - i've never liked it, mostly because I'm a fan of dodging ) and pop the 5 in BM because 16s swap is pretty nice if you plan to utilise the swap buffs (and aren't using something like say, masters bond). I am a little confused as to why you put the extra 5 in SK for the flanking bonus, when longbow you rarely get to flank anything (particularly in dungeons) - I would associated the flanking bonus with SB more than LB?

Hey thanks for the reply!

I keep 30 in Marks because the two Master traits I have ( Eagle Eye and Piercing Arrows) are too good to give up, imo.  The range on eagle eye is fantastic (as is the 5% damage increase), and Piercing Arrows is a must have in a longbow build.

With enemy NPCs bouncing all over the place in dungeons, I notice that I flank a decent amount of the time.  I'd say well over 60% of my positioning has the mob with his back or side to me.  Also, with the amount of aoe's going around and dodge rolling out of the way, flanking occurs more often.  Only time im attacking the mob from the front is if he's trained on me and I have to kite.

For me, IMO, its worth the extra 5 in SK for 10% more damage 60%+ of the time, than 5 more in BM for quicker pet swaps.

[atomicmew]

Drop mighty swap from the pet line.  Pet does marginal DPS anyway.  Add 5 points to wilderness for -20 CD on survival skills for quickening zephyr and entangle (when the bug is eventually fixed).

Edited by atomicmew, 25 September 2012 - 02:08 AM.

[SlappedYak]

Sterling Blackrose, on 24 September 2012 - 11:05 PM, said:

Hey thanks for the reply!

I keep 30 in Marks because the two Master traits I have ( Eagle Eye and Piercing Arrows) are too good to give up, imo.  The range on eagle eye is fantastic (as is the 5% damage increase), and Piercing Arrows is a must have in a longbow build.

With enemy NPCs bouncing all over the place in dungeons, I notice that I flank a decent amount of the time.  I'd say well over 60% of my positioning has the mob with his back or side to me.  Also, with the amount of aoe's going around and dodge rolling out of the way, flanking occurs more often.  Only time im attacking the mob from the front is if he's trained on me and I have to kite.

For me, IMO, its worth the extra 5 in SK for 10% more damage 60%+ of the time, than 5 more in BM for quicker pet swaps.

Yeh eagle eye and piercing is a wicked combo, such a shame 30 marks is needed for it :/ I take 15 in BM because I like the QZ on pet swap and the faster swaps xD and i also like using my pet a bit more than most even in a power build. Just noticed you have prayer of kormir in there, a very nice racial skill...sucks to not be human hehe. It's a nice build, and the great thing about gw2 is that personal preference and playstyle play such a big role in how "good" a build is that there is not "best" build ^.^ I might give this a try with a few tweaks of my own, so thanks for posting it!

[Sterling Blackrose]

atomicmew, on 25 September 2012 - 02:07 AM, said:

Drop mighty swap from the pet line.  Pet does marginal DPS anyway.  Add 5 points to wilderness for -20 CD on survival skills for quickening zephyr and entangle (when the bug is eventually fixed).

Oh nice suggestion!  Quickening Zephyr is an awesome ability.  I'll have to try this out

[Sterling Blackrose]

I edited the build to reflect what Atomicmew suggested.  Dropped 5 points in BM and added to WS for quicker QZ recharge rate.

[Sterling Blackrose]

Rotation for this build:

Always start fights with Axe / Warhorn

Warhorn 5, then 4
Switch to longbow
Use Elite (RaO)
Longbow 3 (Hunters Shot for Weakness condition)
Quickening Zephyr
Longbow 2 ( Rapid Fire)
then auto shot until Hunter's Shot is off CD

Using RaO before any LB skills makes you have Fury and Swiftness for 35 seconds.  Might for 15.
You will be able to use Rapid fire 3x during this time frame.  Huge increase in DPS.

I don't switch back to warhorn until QZ has 9 seconds left on its CD.  With the 10 second weapon swap, this allows me to use QZ, rapid Fire, and warhorn 5 skill together again.

Always make sure you use Hunter's Shot before Rapid Fire!

Rinse and repeat.

Edited by Sterling Blackrose, 28 September 2012 - 09:40 PM.