Guild Wars 2: I cannot properly see the Lion's butthole from that screenshot (2024)

gandlethorpe posted:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?POwEI6MsMDmK7gFycxU1SPeVy9yD-DSRYBhBH14CJsQoiCI9MQtbDAA-e

Armor: Berserker
Trinkets+Weapons: Diviner
Runes: Pack
Relic: Midnight King
Sigils: Concentration on both sets, Force on hammer, Celerity on axe/warhorn

See Also

Janthir Wilds Spear Beta Event Feedback: WarriorSpear condi is not the answer.[Top 5] GW2 Best Builds for TanksGW2 - GuildJen - Beginner Class Guide - Leveling Builds

Traits:
Nature Magic - top/top/top
Beastmastery - mid/mid/btm
Untamed - btm/top/top

Pets: Phoenix/Turtle

Basically, it stacks tons of boons on both you and your pet to make you both damage machines. It can easily maintain perma 25 might, quickness, fury, and swiftness. Protection, regen, vigor, stability, resolution, and resistance are also accessible with decent uptime. Phoenix should be used most of the time, as it has nearly 100% crit rate and better damage output. Turtle is great for emergency tanking, and it still deals great ranged damage.

Unleashed ambushes hit hard and also provide sustain. You want to use them as much as possible by swapping weapons about every 10-11 seconds. This is because ambushing has an ICD of 9 seconds, but recharges instantly when swapping. So you want to ambush both before and after each weapon swap.

Your pet's unleashed skills are also really potent. They're instant cast and can do a lot of burst damage. Note: the tooltips are wrong and display your character's numbers, but it uses the pet's stats just like normal beast skills. Their cooldowns are 10/10/20 in PvE, which makes it really easy to find the rhythm with your own weapon skills. You should be using pet unleash once per weapon swap, right before ambush recharges, and, thus, right before swapping weapons. This means you can use weapon swap's cooldown to keep track of when to use pet unleash again.

Disables are another key element of this build, as they provide quickness, fury, and might (and stability if needed). However, all are a bit awkward to use, with Call of the Wild being the only straightforward disable. Storm Spirit has a delay, but deals good damage and hits twice. Exploding Spores also deals good damage, but needs precise placement. The hammer disables require unleashing your pet to use, which can potentially mess with your timing. Still, they're all potent disables and can do a ton of breakbar damage. One important trick to know is that you can get the quickness from a hammer disable by swapping stances during the animation. I find the leap (hammer 5) much easier to accomplish this with.

Finally, the ultimate Forest's Fortification is not just a great defensive skill. Because it gives additional boons we don't normally have, it's also a DPS increase from Bountiful Hunter. Against high HP targets, you can reduce it's cooldown a ton with good skill management. Try to make sure your skills that do a lot of hits quickly are ready to use before ulting, and there are quite a few of those. Also, don't be shy to use your heal skill as a boon extender if you find yourself not needing the heal much.

Final finally, I've also been playing with a variant that sacrifices a bit of personal offense and condi cleanse to do more AoE support. It drops Exploding Spores for Frost Spirit and also uses the healing spirit. It does regain some DPS by having more boon coverage. The only trait change is swapping Evasive Purity (condi removal on dodge) with Windborne Notes (regen on warhorn skill).

All in all, this build has made me fall in love with my ranger, who I could never really quite get into due to not liking any available playstyles. It's got lots of buttons to press to satisfy my ele-main brain while hitting the exact amount of pet-centric gameplay that appeals to me. I've even been running it in WvW!

Edit: Oh, and one last thing to mention, because it gave me such a headache before I figured out what was happening. Engaging with a mount counts as a weapon swap and puts Let Loose on cooldown. You'll get your ambush immediately after dismounting if you're unleashed, but your next weapon swap won't refresh it until you've spent at least 9 seconds in that set. So if you want to open a fight with two ambushes, don't engage on a mount.