One of the things that bug me about GW2 is how the vast majority of rangers I come across are complete and utter pussies. They grab a bow, they spam their attack buttons, end of story. That's a perfectly valid style of play. It's also fucking boring and - while I don't rule out that some of them actually know what they're doing and dish out okay damage - many of them are worthless and a fucking waste of space. That's okay, GW2 can be enjoyed even with a shit build and when you're completely stupid. And in all fairness, some people simply want to use a bow and absolutely nothing else and they have every right to do so. What pisses me off is how all of them seem to be doing it. A bit like 90% of all warriors using greatswords or swords and axes and 90% of all Guardians using greatswords. Cookie cutter shit.
I don't do cookie cutter. This guide shows you how to kick ass with a dual wield ranger, who depends on swords, axes and a metric fuckton of melee. This is not "the best build" around or some shit. There are no DPS meters in this game, no simulators that parse the strongest possible setup and I'm grateful for that. This build works, it's fucking fun and it's different from the mind-numbingly boring longbow/shortbow playstyle. Is this "better" than bow specs, then? Is it worse? Beats me, who the hell gives a shit? It's not the point of this guide. The point is that you can do more than cookie cutter and still make it work. The result looks a little bit like this:
As you can see in the video, I still need to upgrade my back slot to the level 80 guild backpack, the rest is as good as it gets.
Farming the spawn-zones around Grenth solo, taking on whole packs of enemies without going down. The damage numbers on crits may not be as high as on a warrior or guardian, but the insanely high bleed stacks and poison DPS more than make up for it.
This guide explains my build, how it works and why I've picked particular traits and skills. This isn't the law, you're free to change, customize and experiment and maybe get even better results or more fun out of it that way. What I can say is that I can solo-farm around Grenth without trouble, I rack up massive amounts of wvw kills without AoE bow spam and I'm enjoying this particular play style a lot more than my fully exotic greatsword guardian and his hurrdurr AoE mashing crap. If you dislike any of the stuff I just said, this guide is not for you. Move along.
Overview - The Manly Ranger
The manly build utilizes axes and swords, traps and 'Troll Unguent'. With a high condition damage rampager build and a crit-rate close to 70%, the manly ranger depends on crit procs, bleeds and poison. Thanks to his large health pool and a powerful HoT with a very fast cooldown, this particular ranger can take on multiple foes in melee, wreak havoc and come out without the slightest dent in his rugged beard. He is more difficult to play than flurry/100 Blades warriors or greatsword guardians. Due to the lack of mobility on his offhand axe whirl, he gets a small disadvantage in the AoE department and monster tagging gets a bit more difficult. Traps and a pet make up for that to some extent.
Pros
+ High ranged and melee DPS
+ High survivability
+ Great bleed and poison damage
+ Can handle large groups of enemies solo
+ More to do than just spam the same AoE over and over again
Cons
- Dodge, trap, circle-strafe... you can't just sit back and let your pet take the hits
- Good sigils for 3 main weapons are very expensive
- Mass monster-tagging can be difficult with axes
Like a Baws - Manly Traits
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| Your trait lines will look like this. (Source: Ninjalooter.de) |
We're going for a 10/30/30 setup. Yes, we're only spending 10 points in the Power line on a full DPS spec! Weird, huh? Well, let's have a look at the 'Marksmanship' trait line:
Power is a nice stat. We want power and speccing into this trait line increases it. So why not go for the full 30 points? First of all, the secondary boost, "Condition Duration" is useless. A maxed out 'Marksmanship' trait-line increases your condition duration by 30%, which sounds awesome. But let's do the math: Let's say one of your attacks causes bleeding or poison for 6 seconds, i.e. 'Serpent's Strike' or 'Splitblade'. 30% extra would change duration to 7.8 seconds. That's not a lot of damage for 20 trait points.
Another thing is the actual traits. Put 10 points into 'Marksmanship', unlock 'Steady Focus' and to 10% more damage on full endurance. That's great. We want extra damage. But look at the stuff further up the trait line. The 15 points trait 'Alpha Training' grants 'Opening Strike' to our pet, which is fun, but not necessary. We run this show, the pet is just backup. Our 25 point trait, 'Precise Strike' turns 'Opening Strike' into a guaranteed critical. Big deal - we're going for 70% crit rate, we don't need guaranteed crits! Same goes for most of the selectable 'Marksmanship' traits. They mostly buff pet and bow damage. We don't use bows, we don't spec into beast mastery, so nothing to do here.
Our first full 30 points go into 'Skirmishing'. This is an abolute no-brainer. Higher crit chance, higher crit damage, we want as much of that as somehow possible. The 5, 15 and 25 point bonuses will grant us swiftness and fury on weapon swapping, as well as 10% more damage from flanking attacks. We want the former, because we swap weapons a lot and the latter, because we want more fucking damage. Our 10 point trait of choice is 'Sharpened Edges', because it supports our build perfectly: We're speccing into high crit chance and high condition damage and this trait can cause bleeds on crits. I don't need to elaborate, unless you're a complete moron.
There's nothing great in the 20 point trait section, so we're going for 'Pet's Prowess' to raise our animal companion's crit damage by 30%. Our own damage always takes top priority, but in this case, there are no damage boosting abilities for us, so to the pet it goes.
For our 30 points trait, we're going with 'Honed Axes'. Since we're choosing 'Rampager' stats on our gear instead of 'Berserker' stats, we're gonna need as much extra crit damage as possible and 'Honed Axes' provides exactly that.
Our final 30 points go to.... *drumroll* Poof! 'Wilderness Survival'. Sure, the 300 points of added toughness won't help us do any more damage, but the 300 points of extra condition damage will! After spending 5 points we gain 'Natural Vigor', which regenerates our Endurance 50% faster. Which is good - we're doing 10% more damage at full Endurance, remember? For ten points we get various fun traits to choose from. Personally, I like 'Shared Anguish', because it causes your pet to eat enemy CC effects in your stead. Also very handy in WvW! 15 points, 'Companions Defense'. Meh. 20 points: 'Offhand Training'. Reducing the cooldown on 'Whirling Defense' from 25 seconds to 20 seconds? Fuck, yeah! This is our hardest-hitting ability, so we're boosting that sucker! For 25 points we get 'Pack Strength'. 5% extra damage, while we're above 90% health! Woo! At 30 points I pick 'Sword Mastery' to reduce the cooldown on 'Serpent's Strike'. Faster poison attacks ftw! If you're a wuss, you can also go with 'Empathic Bond', 'Bark Skin' or 'Hide in Plain Sight', which are very cool defensive abilities. But why would you, if you're a manly damage dealer?
1337 skillz - Picking the right Skills
'Troll Unguent' is one of the coolest healing abilities in the entire game. Sure, at level 80 it may only regenerate about half your maximum health over ten seconds, but the HoT effect is powerful enough to keep you fighting. What's more important is the ridiculously low cooldown of 25 seconds. Once 'Troll Unguent' wears off, you only gotta survive another 15 seconds until you can use it again. Master the ancient art of circle-strafing, keep your opponents crippled with traps and nothing shall kill you.
Ahh yes, traps! 'Spike Trap' should be in your utility slots, because it causes bleed damage and serves as an AoE when timed right. Another fun trap is viper's nest - similar effect, but poison damage. Double the conditions, double the fun! And since we love those bleeds, 'Sharpening Stone' is our best friend, causing our next five attacks to add even more bleed stacks!
Our elite slot goes to 'Entangle'. Not only does it cause enemies to bleed even more, but it works as an excellent oshit-button, should we have to make a run for it. What's rooted can't come after us!
So why are we picking all this stuff? Read on!
Teach me, oh wise one! How to play a Manly Ranger
So how do we play this shit? First, let's look at our weapons: Stereo axes are our weapon choice numero uno, a sword goes into the secondary weapon slot's main hand section, that's it. Now pick an enemy. Stare at it. Roar. Beat your chest. Be manly! Now throw your axe. Now get close enough to actually hit and throw again. The enemy will come at you. If there are multiple baddies standing close to each other, your axe will ricochet off the first one and hit the guy next to him and so on. 'Winter's Bite' and 'Path of Scars' are nice attacks against far away targets. If you're facing two or more guys at the same time, use 'Splitblade'. If there's only one enemy, wait until he gets really close, then use 'Splitblade' to get as many bleed stacks on him as possible. Use 'Sharpening Stone' whenever available for even more bleed damage.
Once the enemy closes in for melee attacks, switch from dual axes to sword+axe. Use 'Whirling Defense' to beat the shit out of the sucker - do not move or you will cancel your attack! Wait for the progress bar to finish! This attack is most efficient with 'Sharpening Stone' activated. If there are any live enemies left at melee distance, use both traps. Don't forget 'Serpent's Strike' to renew the poison damage once your snake trap wears off. If you need to get away, try using 'Hornet Sting' rather than a dodge move, to avoid losing Endurance and your 10% damage buff along with it.
Don't be afraid to use 'Troll Unguent' the moment they hit you. If you feel you cannot simply beat the enemy into submission, circle-strafe around them and keep them away with 'Spike Trap' and 'Entangle'. The AI is easy to trick that way and you can beat just about any kind of baddie, unless they use powerful magic and ranged attacks or you step on an elder dragon's dick and there's nobody around to help you.
'Entangle' is also a great tool to help take down tougher enemies or large groups of foes, due to its nice radius and high damage. Don't waste it against harmless baddies!
Should an enemy ever get stuck fighting your pet or just stay outside melee distance for whatever stupid reason, don't be shy to run towards him and whip out your sword. Melee damage is *always* greater than ranged damage, especially against single targets. Unless you're a fucking spellcaster, of course.
As for dungeons, well... melee is fucking useless 90% of the time, so you'll want to stick to throwing axes, unless you're absolutely confident to take on enemies head-on. If a champion punches you in the face, that's usually the end of you. Same goes for every other class in DPS spec and since just about everyone uses DPS spec, well... you get the idea.
The right pet
We want maximum DPS and since canines get the highest Power and decent amounts of Precision, man's best friend is the way to go. Just don't pick a fucking hyena - their power stat is pathetic and the summonable bonus hyena usually runs off in the wrong direction, pulls some shit and get itself killed. You're usually next.
If you just can't stand canines, cats and most birds are an okay choice, too. They get nice crit ratings and most of them have bleed attacks, which we're stacking anyway. I'm not a big fan of moas, spiders and any pet with balanced stats, since they don't excel at anything. Bears are a nono. You want damage, you wanna get toe to toe with the monsters and you don't need a fucking bear to take the hits for you. Bears are tanks, you're manly, you don't want a tank. Go with a DPS pet. Don't be a maverick.
Dress to Kill - The right gear
You can see the gear I'm using at the beginning of the video. So instead of explaining what to get, let me tell you why.
We're not using any defensive stats at all and as you can see, soloing in Orr works just fine. If you're a huge fan of dungeons, adding a bit of toughness and vitality may help, but then again, if you're that kinda player, you're not going to use my build in the first place.
We're choosing 'Rampager' gear (highest crit rate + condition damage) over 'Berserker' gear (high crit rate + crit damage) for two reasons. First of all, we can keep up 8-10 bleed stacks on any opponent, in any battle, without problems. Using all the right abilities and skills at the right time can temporarily stack 'em to over 20 in tough fights. So we wanna buff that shit. We need those bleeds and poison attacks to do as much damage as somehow possible. The other reason we're going for this particular set of stats is a high crit chance. Since crits can randomly cause bleeds with this particular spec and some of our weapon sigils proc on crit, we need the highest crit rate we can get.
As you can see in the video, I go with Superior Runes of the Scholar. They add a large amount of power to make up for the 200 points we're missing by not maxing out our 'Marksmanship' trait line. They also add another 10% of damage while we're above 90% health. Add that to the 5% above 90% health from 'Wilderness Survival' and the 10% whilst at full Endurance from 'Marksmanship' and a possible 10% whilst flanking from 'Skirmishing' and we're getting the most ridiculously exaggerated amount of bonus damage you could imagine. They also raise our crit damage by 8%, which adds up nicely to the extra 10% we get whilst wielding an axe in our main hand. 'Honed Axes', remember?
There are plenty of good alternatives, of course. Most people go for "Divinity" runes. Personally, I think they're overrated. +60 to all stats might sound nice, but what the fuck am I supposed to do with extra toughness, healing and vitality? Sure, the 12% additional crit damage is nice, but I'd rather have the added Power and flat DPS bonus from Scholar runes at a slightly lower bonus to crit damage. If you're a cheapass, you can go crazy with stuff like runes of the flock. An attack bird with a 5s blind attack on 10% of your hits isn't so bad and the additional healing power adds to your survivability. Of course this goes against the whole idea of manliness and maximum damage, but it's still a fair choice when you don't have a lot of gold.
As for sigils, I'm going with the following:
Axe, main hand: Superior Sigil of Bloodlust
Axe, offhand: Superior Sigil of Strength
Sword, main hand: Superior Sigil of Fire
Explanation: The Bloodlust sigil buffs our Power by 10 points after every kill, generating a total of 25 stacks, or 250 extra Power, which lasts until we go down in battle. And we don't go down in battle, because we're manly rangers! Switching from our axe to a sword does not remove the stacks! Nobrainer, buy it!
The Sigil of Strength has a chance to grant us a temporary stack of might on each critical hit. At level 80, each stack of might provides 35 points of Power and Condition Damage. Since this weapon remains in our offhand at all times, we always get to benefit from might procs, both in melee and ranged combat!
The Sigil of Fire has a 30 percent chance to generate an AoE flame burst upon critical hits. We crit all the fucking time, this sigil procs a whole LOT and we want every bit of AoE damage we can get. Gimme!
There are valid alternatives, depending on your taste, play style and budget. A word of warning: You can only use one stat-buffing sigil at a time. If you put a Sigil of Bloodlust on one weapon to boost your Power and a Sigil of Accuracy on the other to boost your Precision, you will only get stacks for one of the two, not both. They don't mix!
Buffs like Might *do* stack with them, however, as they only last for a few seconds and not until you are defeated.
Yay, war! The Manly Ranger in WvW
Whenever people talk about WvW, they bring up stupid shit like "One on one situations in WvW". Let me tell you how WvW works: 90% of the time you follow a fucking zerg and you'll be attacking a fucking gate. Sometimes an enemy zerg shows up, everybody spams ranged AoE attacks and one zerg lives, the other one dies and starts bitching about shit in the team channel. Sure, on some rare occasions you might end up in a 1vs1 and the other guy might actually choose to fight. You know what's a lot more likely to happen? The other guy runs until he finds 3 friends to beat the shit out of you, the 3 friends are already there but you cannot see them or the fucker uses Gamehack, gets infinite amounts of Endurance and has no cooldown on his skills. Or you're so perplexed to run into that one single enemy player, you completely forget to move when he one-shots you with 100 Blades.
It doesn't matter what god damn class you play in WvW. You sit on a tower and operate a fucking arrow cart. You kick down a fucking gate. You spam AoE attacks when the enemy zerg arrives. Every class can do that. But this is the internet, you're probably 14 fucking years old and know more about games than I ever will, so you're gonna disagree with me. Fine. So try that, should you ever end up in an actual, real, fair one on one battle:
Circle-Strafing and cripples (Spike Trap, pet abilities) are your best friend against average Joe, because average Joe is an idiot. If the guy is smart and leaps at you, possibly uses some CC to prevent you from getting away, switch to your sword, use 'Hornet Sting' to get away, pop your heal and when the sucker gets into melee range again, hack him to bits with 'Whirling Defense'. You're a ranger and he won't see it coming, because they're all stupid and use nothing but bows. This ability is also useful against casters, as it reflects most of their shit and throws it right back at them. Use 'Entangle' when they try to run away or you need to make a run for it, yourself. If they're not running, use it for some extra bleed stacks. Don't forget to switch pets if pet #1 gets downed, that's why they come in tag-teams.
In the much more likely zerg vs zerg battles, just throw your axes. The ricochet-effect, 'Splitblade' and your pet will make sure you get credit for just about every single idiot who dies around you, resulting in a high kill count and more loot bags than you can eat in a day.
-Cat
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