Guild Wars 2 Ranger Profession Guide -- Getting In Touch With Nature

We've put together this Guild Wars 2 Ranger profession guide to familiarize you with the class that never travels alone in ArenaNet's massively multiplayer role playing game. This handy guide gives you all the most important info about the Ranger from Guild Wars 2 at a glance.

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You Should Play A Ranger If: If you hate playing alone, or love having a pet in MMOs, the Ranger could be for you. The Ranger’s greatest asset is his pet, one of over four dozen types of creatures found in the wild and charmed to fight at the player’s side. In addition, the Ranger utilizes a great number of long distance attacks via the shortbow and longbow, and has a great number of traps and debilitating conditions to hinder the enemy.

Read on for the rest of our in-depth Guild Wars 2 Ranger guide.

How You Play A Ranger: The ranger can have up to four “slotted” pets at any given time: two land pets and two aquatic pets. You can hotswap your pet out (available from Level 1) at any time with F4, providing a quick heal to the initial pet.

Pets can be charmed and “collected” by finding a wild animal at large with the “juvenile” tag out in front. Pets are arranged into families (for instance, canines), which all share three attacks. Each individual species has a unique skill, however, activated by pressing F2. F1 will command the pet to attack the current target, and F3 will switch being passive and aggressive mode. While that may sound a bit complicated, for the most part, you won’t need to micromanage your pet…they’ll help unless you specifically tell them not to.

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Rangers can deal a fair amount of damage, but can also act well in a support role. Rangers can set numerous traps to debilitate the opponent, as well as call Spirits to buff their allies and create beneficial AoE effects on the battlefield.

Rangers do incorporate elements of previous MMO’s ranged classes. With this familiarity, and a relative lack of the stranger mechanics found in the Elementalist or Engineer classes, the Ranger is one of the easier professions to pick up for anyone a bit uncomfortable with the complexity of the game. Give it a shot!

Ranger class pets are found below, divided into families.

Ranger Equipment: As an adventurer class, the Ranger has access to medium armor. The Ranger has a wide variety of weapons from which to choose: on the two-handed front, there’s the greatsword, longbow, and shortbow. Main-hand weapons include the axe and sword, while off-hand options (controlling skills 4 and 5 on the skillbar) include the axe, dagger, torch, and warhorn. As with most classes, you’ll be able to equip two separate weapon loadouts and hotswap between them, starting at level 7.

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Ranger Traits: At level 11, and every level after, each character earns a Trait Point that can be spent to enhance their attributes. Each point that you spend will increase two primary or secondary attributes, and every five points unlocks either a Minor or Major trait. A Ranger’s traits are divided into Marksmanship, Skirmishing, Wilderness Survival, Nature Magic, and Beastmastery.

Marksmanship

• +10 Power per point spent
• +1% Condition Duration per point spent
• Improves - longbow and harpoon Gun range, signets

Skirmishing

• +10 Precision per point spent
• +1% Critical Damage per point spent
• Improves - axe and shortbow skills, traps

Wilderness Survival

• +10 Toughness per point spent
• +10 Healing Power per point spent
• Improves - sword and off-hand skills, traps, survival skills

Nature Magic

• +10 Vitality per point spent
• +1% Boon Duration per point spent
• Improves - greatsword, boons, spirit skills

Beastmastery

• +10 Healing per point spent
• +1 Empathy per point spent (improves pet abilities)
• Improves – pet usage and skills

What do you think of the Ranger in Guild Wars 2 so far? Let us know in the comments below, and tell us how you've set up your Ranger's weapons, skills, and traits. Also, be sure to check out our other Guild Wars 2 guides, including our Guild Wars 2 Warrior guide, the Guild Wars 2 Mesmer Guide, the Guild Wars 2 Elementalist Guide, the Guild Wars 2 Guardian Guide, the Guild Wars 2 Necromancer Guide, the Guild Wars 2 Engineer Guide, the Guild Wars 2 Thief Guide, our Guild Wars 2 Beginners Guide and our Guild Wars 2 Beginners Tips, and stay tuned for more Guild Wars 2 guides.