Tuesday 12 May 2015

Gearing my Ranger in Guild Wars 2

This last week I've been getting into the nitty gritty of end game in GW2 or at least trying to figure out what gear my Ranger should be getting. In the space of a week I managed to get two new ascended weapons from the mighty Tequatl. As I have my sword and short bow already, I opted for torch for my offhand melee and a greatbow.

Up to now, I'd preferred the shortbow and had built my build as a 'condition ranger' - a specialist at making things bleed and keeping them bleeding (and/or burning) for as long as possible, or until they drop dead. But the seemingly 'better' or at least more desired spec is the longbow hunter. Pure DPS, so I found a build and decided to give the longbow a go. I managed get into an event train in the Silverwastes ( more on that later) and ran for close to two ours with the spec. I hated it. The skills fired off way too slowly and it just didn't feel right for my little Asura. The Greatbow has gone into storage, perhaps for the Warrior, Itsemekhona, and I'll stick with my trusty shortbow.

As I now seem to be all set for weapons, I now need to focus on weapons. I have a ton of mismatched items and for some time I've been delving into the Silverwastes, a zone where you can collect Bandit Crests. These can be traded in for various things and most notably a recipe I've been trying to get in order to craft 'Sinister' armour, a set that improves condition damage, seemingly a good fit. Every time I've been to the zone it's been solo and usually only get 10-20 crests each time. As the item I needed costs 400 this was set to be a long grind. Then I happened upon a group and started following them. Next thing I know, we were flying from event to event, racking up crests and within an hour I was well over my 400 target (as well as a ton of other random loot) lots of fun, and I managed to get something I've been working on for a couple of weeks, in one session.

So now begins he grind to craft the armour set as I can only make on per day. It doesn't look like I'll be getting any ascended armour anytime soon so at least I can get a set that will help with my build.

4 comments:

  1. That's funny, I'm the other way around: I love the longbow on my ranger, and the shortbow just doesn't do it for me. Maybe the shortbow will be good for DPS when they fix the dot caps (I don't know when that's going to happen, I'm not really on top of the curve when it comes to GW2 - still leveling up my characters).

    I use the longbow as secondary weapon on my warrior, and it plays differently on that class. I like having it mostly for its functionality: sometimes there just are instances in which melee is not the right thing, e.g. when you're almost dead and need to keep distance for a bit, or when you're doing an event and can't get a score because there's too many (ranged) people participating that get to the mobs first.

    Good luck with the grind!

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  2. That's funny, I'm the other way around: I love the longbow on my ranger, and the shortbow just doesn't do it for me. Maybe the shortbow will be good for DPS when they fix the dot caps (I don't know when that's going to happen, I'm not really on top of the curve when it comes to GW2 - still leveling up my characters).

    I use the longbow as secondary weapon on my warrior, and it plays differently on that class. I like having it mostly for its functionality: sometimes there just are instances in which melee is not the right thing, e.g. when you're almost dead and need to keep distance for a bit, or when you're doing an event and can't get a score because there's too many (ranged) people participating that get to the mobs first.

    Good luck with the grind!

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  3. Thanks for the tips Jeromai. I'll certainly look out for the Rabid and Berserker sets. To be honest, I'm very reluctant to follow the cookie cutter that everyone else uses and I hate being corralled into playing a particular way but your advise is sound!

    Thanks for stopping by!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for the tips Jeromai. I'll certainly look out for the Rabid and Berserker sets. To be honest, I'm very reluctant to follow the cookie cutter that everyone else uses and I hate being corralled into playing a particular way but your advise is sound!

    Thanks for stopping by!

    ReplyDelete