A Ranger DPS challenge for you:

OK, here's the setup:

Goal: To achieve the highest DPS possible with an eye towards energy sustainability (isn't that always the goal?)

The rules, 3-2-1:

* You can choose THREE skills
* They can rely on only TWO attribute lines
* At least ONE of those lines must be a ranger line


What do you bring? Skill lines:

marksmanship 11+1, expertise 10+3+1, beastmastery 7+1

You have some points left over.

Skills:

Tiger's fury, and two attack skills of your choice, say penetrating shot, and
barrage (if you have room for an elite), or hunter's shot (if not).

Problem is, a good ranger dps build is mostly ranger skills, so it seems silly to restrict it to only 3 skills. Rangers are kind of a narrow class, unlike mesmers. You can't just spend a portion of your build for dps, you need to make an entire build with that purpose in mind.

Lome

Problem is, a good ranger dps build is mostly ranger skills, so it seems silly to restrict it to only 3 skills. Rangers are kind of a narrow class, unlike mesmers. You can't just spend a portion of your build for dps, you need to make an entire build with that purpose in mind. I admit, it's pretty whimsical. I was a little bored and was goofing around last night in the arena with this to see how much damage I could do to people using only three skills. It's fun for theorycrafting, but I agree in real-game use you want to use your whole bar to achieve your goals.

For what it's worth, last night I played with Tiger's Fury + Kindle + Quickshot, and did good damage against warriors, but ran out of gas too soon to consider it a "good" build. I'm just curious to see what others come up with.

Incendiary Arrows, Fragility, Tigers Fury
Illusion, Beast Mastery

Standard Fragility Ranger. Note that ths qualifies even though it uses a skill from a third attribute (IA), because it does not invest any points in that attribtute.

For those who dont know Frag Rangers work by applying the 1 second condition from level 0 IA, which they recover from .33 seconds before they are hit with another arrow (short bows with TF fire at 1 shot / 1.33 seconds) You got noraml bow damage, frag damage (twice) from each arrow, and the degen of the fire. Lots of DPS. Yup, fragility for 12*28 = 336,
damage from the burning 6*14 = 84,
damage from 6 arrows with a +35%, 15-28 damage bow = 174
total 594 damage in ~8 seconds is a big pile of hurt.