Need help with an open world low intensity Ranger build

[Kemosabe.8946]

Hi, 

 

I'm returning to the game after a few years away, but unfortunately im returning with an injured left hand and cant play my ranger with a lot of actions per minute. My focus is just completing the stories and the open world content as i love to explore and unlock all the map as i go, so i was looking to optimize my Ranger to easily do that type of content, any recommendations? Looking for a build with as few actions as possible and high survivability/damage, if such a thing exists.

 

If there is another class you would recommend, then i would be happy to reroll if it was better suited. 

[Beddo.1907]

This site has some low intensity builds marked with blue "Li" under the build name: https://hardstuck.gg/ 
Personally my best bets are rifle Mechanist and Minion necro. (not on that site)

As for a Ranger build, the best choice would be just core ranger: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?POgAMFlZwCZbsMGKO8PaL9RMH-zRIYRUxXGRkBVUC2OA-e
Just pew pew pew while the pet tanks.

[anduriell.6280]

I would use something like this, you should be tanky enough to stand against some mobs. The bird grants you enough mobility to move out from enemy AoEs. 

Bird to get close, pull and axe #5. After that swap to Shortbow and pewpew to your contempt.you do autos with some spicing from #2 and #4 whenever you feel like. No need to swap back again. You can use the elite to for some aoe around if there are a bunch of mobs and your pull axe#5 is on CD. 

If you need the extra unmerge and use the burd as tank while you pewpew the champion. Axe mainhand for mutiple low hp mobs.   

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?POwAUdflRwkYPMQ2JWeX7P/BkA-zRZYVBvFxAbUwKBxHA-e

[Andy.5981]

Something a bit different - the Lord Hizen Dagger/Dagger and torch build. There isnt much in openworld content that causes it problems. It is a beast, high condition damage and survivbility. It can solo champions with ease and some bounties too. Movement isn't all over the place and you can literally stand there and facetank most stuff 🙂

This is the video 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsiZxWl90fM&list=PLpBh4KskobjRJ6LHNSDllfAK2GDjELnIl&index=2

This is the build on GW2Skills.net

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?POwAgi%2FlZweYRMJGKeqXfP3REH-zRJYkRLfZkZK0bBo3BIctwbh3PN-e

Edited July 13, 2022 by Andy.5981

[Kemosabe.8946]

Thanks for all the help so far, i forgot to post but this is my current setup, and im having a lot of trouble, dying countless times, dealing with any silver or bronze mobs in the Lake Doric zone. 

Character 1

Character 2

 

Edited July 13, 2022 by Kemosabe.8946

[Zyreva.1078]

3 hours ago, Kemosabe.8946 said:

Thanks for all the help so far, i forgot to post but this is my current setup, and im having a lot of trouble, dying countless times, dealing with any silver or bronze mobs in the Lake Doric zone. 

Character 1

Character 2

 

As a starting point - read skill and trait descriptions and try to figure out what things do, then pick stuff that makes somewhat sense.

Because your setup is all over the place, so no surprise it doesn't work very well. For example, you picked soulbeast traits that enhance the protection boon and stance skills respectively - but your build has neither, so those traits do absolutely nothing for you. Your gear seems to be a wild mix (it is better to focus on one stat combination only) and you weapons (second one is shortbow i guess?) don't work well together, because they require completely different builds to be efficient.

Figure out what type of build you want to run - power or condition/hybrid. Then pick gear, weapons, skills and traits accordingly. Ultimatively a lot of different builds can work well for open world and story content. And with a little bit of knowledge and understanding of game mechanics you can not only create your own builds arround what you need and enjoy playing, it also makes things a lot easier and can even reduce "mechanical stress", if you know which skill to use when, instead of wildly spamming random buttons in hope something works.

Some very superficial notes just to give a general idea about various stuff:

Traitlines:

Marksmanship - provides more dmg for power builds

Skirmishing - provides more dmg for both power or condition builds

Wilderness Survival - provides defense and dmg for condition builds

Nature Magic - all about boons

Beastmastery - strenghtens your pet and provides a lot of dmg to power soulbeast while merged

Druid - healing

Soulbeast - a lot of dmg when merged, not that great when running arround with the pet out.

Untamed - cc, tankyness, can have decent dmg but is more situational than soulbeast

Weapons:

Power only - longbow, greatsword, sword, hammer

Condi only - shortbow, torch, offhand dagger

Staff - healing only

The other weapons can work in pretty much any type of build, with axes probably being the best choice overall.

Ranged builds tend to be easier to play than melee. But avoid double bow.

Gear

Power builds require power, precision and ferocity. Good options are Berserker's (maximum dmg, no defense) and Marauders's (some extra hp for a minor dmg loss). Mixing those two is actually fine.

Condi builds require condition dmg and expertise (sometimes also precision) and also benefit from power and ferocity to a lesser extent, but don't neccessarily need those. Good options: Viper's (maximum dmg, no defense), Trailblazer's (condi dmg only, very tanky) or Celestial (Hybrid, good dmg and defense, reliant on boons for optimal use).

Utility/Elite skills - i'd recommend 1 stunbreak/defensive skill, 2 dmg skills. Avoid racial skills (except maybe the Sylvan Hound because ranger does not have great offensive elite skills in PvE anymore).

I won't post a specific build, because i don't really know what you want to play and there are plenty of options, but since you seem to like bows, some sort of condi shortbow build is probably going to be your best choice.

Edited July 13, 2022 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[Kemosabe.8946]

20 minutes ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

As a starting point - read skill and trait descriptions and try to figure out what things do, then pick stuff that makes somewhat sense.

Because your setup is all over the place, so no surprise it doesn't work very well. For example, you picked soulbeast traits that enhance the protection boon and stance skills respectively - but your build has neither, so those traits do absolutely nothing for you. Your gear seems to be a wild mix (it is better to focus on one stat combination only) and you weapons (second one is shortbow i guess?) don't work well together, because they require completely different builds to be efficient.

Figure out what type of build you want to run - power or condition/hybrid. Then pick gear, weapons, skills and traits accordingly. Ultimatively a lot of different builds can work well for open world and story content. And with a little bit of knowledge and understanding of game mechanics you can not only create your own builds arround what you need and enjoy playing, it also makes things a lot easier and can even reduce "mechanical stress", if you know which skill to use when, instead of wildly spamming random buttons in hope something works.

Some very superficial notes just to give a general idea about various stuff:

Traitlines:

Marksmanship - provides more dmg for power builds

Skirmishing - provides more dmg for both power or condition builds

Wilderness Survival - provides defense and dmg for condition builds

Nature Magic - all about boons

Beastmastery - strenghtens your pet and provides a lot of dmg to power soulbeast while merged

Druid - healing

Soulbeast - a lot of dmg when merged, not that great when running arround with the pet out.

Untamed - cc, tankyness, can have decent dmg but is more situational than soulbeast

Weapons:

Power only - longbow, greatsword, sword, hammer

Condi only - shortbow, torch, offhand dagger

Staff - healing only

The other weapons can work in pretty much any type of build, with axes probably being the best choice overall.

Ranged builds tend to be easier to play than melee. But avoid double bow.

Good gear (again, pick one, don't mix and match)

For power builds: Berserker's (maximum dmg, no defense), Marauders's (some extra hp for a minor dmg loss)

For condi builds: Viper's (maximum dmg, no defense), Trailblazer's (condi dmg only, very tanky) or Celestial (Hybrid, good dmg and defense, reliant on boons for optimal use)

Utility/Elite skills - i'd recommend 1 stunbreak/defensive skill, 2 dmg skills. Avoid racial skills (except maybe the Sylvan Hound because ranger does not have great offensive elite skills in PvE anymore).

I won't post a specific build, because i don't really know what you want to play and there are plenty of options, but since you seem to like bows, some sort of condi shortbow build is probably going to be your best choice.

 

Thanks for all the advice, so if i wanted to play with a shortbow condition build focused on killing stuff fast, it would involve buying a complete set of viper armor, with skirmishing, survival and beastmastery (so i can have my pet out to help tank mobs). Any advice on what runes i should use on gear?

 

I want to as minimal hassle as possible while questing and not die agaisnt every harder mob that i encounter, and as i have limited dexterity on the hand i use for keybind, not a lot of keys to press for my rotation (i used to play hunter in WoW and it allowed for an easier playstyle while soloing). If you think ranger is not ideal for that playstyle, i could reroll to a necromancer as someone sugested above. 

[Zyreva.1078]

56 minutes ago, Kemosabe.8946 said:

 

Thanks for all the advice, so if i wanted to play with a shortbow condition build focused on killing stuff fast, it would involve buying a complete set of viper armor, with skirmishing, survival and beastmastery (so i can have my pet out to help tank mobs). Any advice on what runes i should use on gear?

Krait runes are usually the best option for condi ranger builds, because bleeds will be your main dmg source.

Regarding the exact build - viper offers no defensive stats - can you survive? If yes, then i'd recommend something like this.

Yes, it is soulbeast and i said it wouldn't be optimal for unmerged gameplay. But even unmerged it would still offer more dmg (and sustain) than a core build (because unfortunately pets and therefore beastmastery offer very little dmg and they can tank just fine without) and Untamed can be a bit tricky to take advantage of.

If you want something more tanky, but still with reasonable dmg output, replace viper's gear with trailblazer and take Primal Reflexes instead of Sharpened Edges (or even use trappers expertise and traps for more aoe dmg).

If you struggle to keep pets (or yourself) alive, Nature Magic (instead of soulbeast) would actually be better than Beastmastery, because giving boons to the pets will increase their survivability (and dmg) as well as your own more than beastmastery would do. Nature Magic also synergizes very well with celestial stats and you could even run spirits  to provide aoe boons for your allies.

Something like this.

Note, you can run different pets and there is probably room for optimisation when it comes to sigil and utility skill choice, because i haven't tested those exact builds, but overall those setups should provide a solid baseline. And that's what they are supposed to be. Builds don't have to be set in stone anyway. Traits, skills and pets are easily swapped, allowing adaptation to a given situation. Need to deal with a break bar? Just add storm spirit and pets with a lot of cc. Overwhelmed by condis? -Take another cleanse. And so on ...

Keep in mind, shortbow deals a lot more dmg when attacking from behind or the side, so try to position yourself accordingly (pets will help with that). But generally shortbow ranger is rather easy to play.

Also i don't know how tp prizes look right now, but some of those stats might be rather costly. If you can't afford your desired gear yet, dire (no crit) or rabid (with crit) can be cheap alternatives for the beginning. Those stats lack expertise tho, so goal should be to replace them as soon as possible.

Edited July 13, 2022 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[Endaris.1452]

Basically anything UmbraNoctis posted is very much correct.

I would generally recommend you to run one melee weapon set and one ranged weapon set.

The ranged weapon set will allow you snipe single non-veteran mobs from range without really having to engage in combat. If mobs are isolated as on open world maps, just using Longbow 2, 4 and autoattacks should kill most single mobs coming your way with no conscious effort.

If mobs are grouped, e.g. in story content or events, after using Longbow 5 and 2 you're essentially out of good ranged attacks so you will want to switch to your melee set to get a fresh set of cooldowns.

The best weaponset to deal with mobgroups in melee range on Ranger is Axe/Axe.

Axe/Axe is currently very powerful for both damage types, making it the best option for your mixed gear and Axe 5 just shreds through generic mobs as if they were paper.

For the pet I think smokescale is the most convenient one for solo open world on soulbeast because it has an evading attack, making it very easy to use to plan your next action and outside of beastmode it's still a good pet.

This would be my suggestion for your current gear in traits and skills:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?POwAceNlRwwYasLGKWuX+PtSk+YA-e

You have the two signets as two skills you don't usually interact with, giving you passive healing and a panic button when you receive a lot of direct damage. Frost Trap contributes to your AoE damage while chilling enemies. The elite is used for boon access, especially against enemy groups with a lot of CC.

Alternative good pets would be Polar Bear (immunity to direct damage + pulling enemies) or Black Bear (immunity to direct damage x2), if you take either of these, you can switch out Stone Signet for Signet of the Wild.

Generally you don't want to run very mixed gear like you do now. 488 condition damage is not enough to make your conditions kill the enemy in any significant amount of time and generally speaking, for open world, power has a great advantage, simply because of the waiting time condi builds have until their damage actually got applied to the enemy. With power the enemy is dead faster and has less chances killing you. You can still play a condi build of course but I would highly advise against gearing up with Viper gear for that.

As you want to play LI because your dexterity is limited, I would personally recommend you to not run any stat set that is purely offensive because at the end of the day these usually rely on quickly chaining a bunch of skills to murder your enemies before they murder you.

There are several good hybridish sets that offer damage more than sufficient for open world while being decently tanky like Marauder, Commander (not that good for ranger but good on other classes), Trailblazer, Ritualist and Celestial. The more bulk you have the less you need to actively react to enemies.

If you find you're successful with the build mentioned, consider getting rid of condi damage pieces in favor of more Marauder gear to increase the damage you do with your longbow snipes and Axe 5, shortening the duration of fights and increasing the ease with which you can take down veterans.

Generally speaking Ranger is not really the most LI friendly build but since open world is pretty low intensity for most areas, I think you could make this work. In case you don't feel comfortable with it, you probably want to go into the direction of a minionmancer or a mechanist build.

Edited July 13, 2022 by Endaris.1452
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[loregnum.3619]

You said if there was another class that may be better suited for this so I am going to say go necro reaper. I started up the game late March and ranger has been my main pretty much the entire time (300+ hours) though I level 80 boosted a necro back in late April. I finally decided to get the reaper trait line unlocked late last week and holy cow, it's great! Very low intensity and I find it better than my condi soulbeast ranger in almost every single way, including fun. You can pretty much just use auto attack the entire time if you want and go in and out of reaper shroud with its great scythe weapon and easily handle things solo in open world/story, including mobs/vets/elites in Bitterfrost Frontier, Living World season 4 zones, Heart of Thorns, Path of Fire. I did a bunch of farming in Silverwastes today and reaper laughed at it all. No idea how it does solo vs champions since I'm not a good enough player to really solo champions...but it is at least fine vs champions if there are some others around. Haven't had any issues at all with the champions I have come across while doing events and having others around. This is basically my build:

 

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?PSwEcEWosCWFTjdxGxR7qs5D-zR5YBKZEPUhQQQVJEoVQCiJawcSBYEEShAIBGbKURF43A-e

 

So that's the class/prof I would recommend for you. I also prefer low intensity since I play with a controller and it can be a pain having to push a bunch of different button combos in a rotation and while I didn't find my ranger to be too bad with this and it has less input needed than my firebrand guardian (a great and fun class), it was still more than I would like to use when I am just running around in open world. This has been great for that.

 

I still do like ranger but the class needs some changes I feel based on my time with necro and guardian. Ranger just seems to be lacking a good bit of stuff, specifically if playing solo. 

 

You can also run core necro with say death magic replacing reaper trait line and it is still pretty solid until you have reaper unlocked.

[Kemosabe.8946]

10 hours ago, loregnum.3619 said:

You said if there was another class that may be better suited for this so I am going to say go necro reaper. I started up the game late March and ranger has been my main pretty much the entire time (300+ hours) though I level 80 boosted a necro back in late April. I finally decided to get the reaper trait line unlocked late last week and holy cow, it's great! Very low intensity and I find it better than my condi soulbeast ranger in almost every single way, including fun. You can pretty much just use auto attack the entire time if you want and go in and out of reaper shroud with its great scythe weapon and easily handle things solo in open world/story, including mobs/vets/elites in Bitterfrost Frontier, Living World season 4 zones, Heart of Thorns, Path of Fire. I did a bunch of farming in Silverwastes today and reaper laughed at it all. No idea how it does solo vs champions since I'm not a good enough player to really solo champions...but it is at least fine vs champions if there are some others around. Haven't had any issues at all with the champions I have come across while doing events and having others around. This is basically my build:

 

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?PSwEcEWosCWFTjdxGxR7qs5D-zR5YBKZEPUhQQQVJEoVQCiJawcSBYEEShAIBGbKURF43A-e

 

So that's the class/prof I would recommend for you. I also prefer low intensity since I play with a controller and it can be a pain having to push a bunch of different button combos in a rotation and while I didn't find my ranger to be too bad with this and it has less input needed than my firebrand guardian (a great and fun class), it was still more than I would like to use when I am just running around in open world. This has been great for that.

 

I still do like ranger but the class needs some changes I feel based on my time with necro and guardian. Ranger just seems to be lacking a good bit of stuff, specifically if playing solo. 

 

You can also run core necro with say death magic replacing reaper trait line and it is still pretty solid until you have reaper unlocked.

 

I tried using the character boost to see how the necromancer played, focusing on having minions out, and i found it to be much more relaxing to play, thanks for the suggestion :)

 

Im going to try to level one with the build you sugested and see how it goes. 

[Zaret.1450]

if its open world, untamed, long bow, 2 axes, marauder or dragon stats and pets like wite tiger, bears etc that tank a lot, just stay out and pew pew, if they get close drop traps, take axes and axe 2 in their face and axe 5 to clean, also sb4 and axe 4 with a trait lowers skill cd if you ever need it, if not theres lifesteal on another trait XD

[Ruisenior.6342]

Hi (first sorry for my  bad english), in terms of solo safeness and Li i would suggest you this.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?POQAUlVw+YYsN2JWaP7L/SO1IA-zxQYsErqUA4xoQCEvAMsKwEA-e

   I tried to make the build as cheap as possible. Weapon can be easily obtained in the upcoming festival of the four winds, Armor/runes/sigils cheap on tp, and trinkets with laurels, i prefered to max survivability over damage. Food Tropical Peppermint Cake could be more suitable here than Koi Cake.

  *** Playstyle;

-Offense just auto and use 2 and 7 and marsh drake skill F2 on cooldown( Try to flank for more damage). 

-Defense /Arctodus and Marsh Drake are S tier tank, switch only to Arctodus in case marsh drake heal drops (it provides more aoe dps). /Shortbow 3 grants you an evade in case you run out of dodges and can give you perma swiftness. /Healing spring is a large heal(if you stand on it) that will also take out condis and can be blasted by Marsh Drake Tail Swipe pasive skill. /Signet of renewal will grant you and your pet a small pasive heal and is a good panic buton in case condis overwhelm you, its also a stun break. /Dodging grants you protection and protection grants you heal every second. Using 2 dodges on 1 to 2 sec interval between each other will grant you 5 sec protection and almost 2k heal.

   This build can take all open world content with ease and you will be able to solo some bounties 🙂 

Edit; you can use another offhand shortbow with the same stats/sigils (maybe change blood for doom but is too expensive) and swap on cooldown to get the swiftness and fury provided on the skirmish traitline.

Edited July 30, 2022 by Ruisenior.6342