Guild Wars 2 Ranger Tournament PvP Build Guide

Guild Wars 2 Ranger Tournament PvP Build Guide by Sycthrex

Hey guys, this is my partly tested DPS build i used during the last Stress Test and found it to be very useful in 1v1 and 2v1 situations.

Please remember that this build is aimed more for damage rather than survivability and if focus you may become a liabilty unless your team can help you in teamfights, but that’s what organization is all about right? :P

Right let’s get started on the build.

Weapon Sets

Main Weapon Set – Longbow

I chose this weapon because it defines (in my eyes) a Ranger as a whole, raining hell down on the enemy from afar suits my playstyle completely so having the Longbow as my Main Weapon Set just seemed right for me.

Weapon Skills

Long Range Shot – This is our ‘Auto Attack’ and should be used pretty much every free second you have when fighting an enemy. and as it states in the tooltip, the further you are away from the target the more damage it does, an excellent little feature to the skill if you ask me, rewarding the player for kiting and staying as far away as possible, much like a Ranger should do.

Rapid Fire – Here we have our ‘Ez Mode’ skill as it requires the player to only know when to use the skill and then it deals out large amounts of damage when used correctly(We will come to this later). As the tooltip states, this fires mutiple arrows at the enemy.

Hunters Shot – Fires an arrow to make your for vulnerable and gives your pet swiftness, pretty simple and easy to understand ability, not the best in my eyes but we have to have one average skill right? :P

Point Blank Shot – I cannot explain how useful this skill can be, this allows you to knock someone back and the closer they are to you, the further back they will be knocked, this can be used to interrupt high damaging skills and also push that pesky melee character away from you.

Barrage – This is our AoE bread and butter and can be used in conjuntion with Point Blank Shot, a little tip is to set your ‘ground target’ skills to activate wherever your mouse cursor, those DOTA/HoN/LoL players know what i mean.

Second Weapon Set – Short Bow

This became my second weapon set after multiple runs with the Greatsword and realising that i didn’t find it as useful as the Shortbow, this weapon allows for those opening hard stuns with Concussion Shot followed by the multiple bleeds/cripples and then switch back to the Longbow to deal the rest of your damage.

Cross Fire – This skills allows us to put a 3 seconds bleed on our target if hit from behind or the side, this goes well with the whole reason we use the Shortbow, for hard stuns and bleeds, this should be used before or after Concussion Shot depending on the enemies position.

Poison Volley – This skill allows us to fire 5 poisioned arrows but i don’t use this myself unless i am rolling my face across my keyboard and have the time to do so.

Quick Shot – This skill gives us a little speed boost which shold be used after our Shortbow Combo and just before we switch to the Longbow to allow us to gain that distance for kiting.

Crippling Shot – As it states, a nice cripple skill and the next 3 attacks from our pet adds bleeding, more DoTs for us

Concussion Shot – Here is our hard stun for this weapon set which allows us to stun for 1 second if hit from behind or the side, this allows us time to apply everything we need before switching to the Longbow, or alternativly giving us the chance to escape from hairy situations.

Skills

Healing Skill – Healing Spring
I choose this specifically to assist my team in teamfights but i’m sure the others would suit you better if you so wished.

Utility Skill 1 – Signet of Stone
Having this is pretty much just to increase our survivability as we can’t be too squishy and be a hinderance to our team now can we, activating this will also give ourselves and the pet a nice invincibility for a good few seconds which can save our asses when you see the enemy drop all their cooldowns on you.

Utility Skill 2 – Sharpening Stone
This allows my net five skills to apply a bleed effect on the enemy, this is usually popped before my Elite skill and Rapid Fire for max possible burst damage.

Utility Skill 3 – Quickening Zephyr
This ability allows my skills and actions to act twice as fast, giving us even more burst damage in a shorter time, using this along with the Sharpening Stone, Rampage As One and Rapid Fire is what gives us our insane burst damage on a single target, or Barrage for AoE.

Elite Skill – Rampage As One
I have tried the other Elite skills but i find this is the best one for Tournament style PvP to help burst down those enemies in either 1v1 or 2v1 situations, or to help secure that boss/creature kill for the team, or to steal it

Traits

These traits are subject to change and can be played around with depending on the situation, and as stated before this was something i put together during the Stress Test and have not had chance to test against other traits using dummies.

Although i would note that picking the Might Swap trait within the Beastmastery ‘tree’ will allow your pet to gain 3 stacks of might for 10 seconds so having your pet swap hotkeyed it essential.

I hope you enjoyed this, any comments are welcome.

Sycthrex