Need help on activating Ranger skill?

My 1st profession is an elementalist and I have a pet cougar who I charmed in Regent valley as the ranger told me to do. I also have 2 longbows and a starter bow in my inventory. But how do I activate my bow or whatever to shoot arrows since my 2nd profession is suppose to be a Ranger? I do not see any action icon in my action slots. ONLY my spells and cougar slots? I do have bows in my inventory. So what do I do to be able to use my bow and shoot arrows at an enemy? Please help this newbie.thanks

did you equipped the bow??

1. Please do not equip a bow. You are not a ranger. As an ele, you are supposed to use spells to fight. Put the pet away until you are level 20. Enlist henchmen to help you in battle.

2. If you are determined to be a very bad ranger, then move a bow from inventory into your weapon slot (press I to see correct panel). Your staff will automatically move down into your inventory. DO NOT SELL TO MERCHANT unless you have a better one.

3. go to the Campfire section of guru and read the stickied basics thread in the Elementalist subforum.
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/b...t10314574.html

4. Have fun and enjoy the game.

Or double-click on the bow in your inventory and it will automatically be equipped. When you select a target, you will be using the bow as long as you're not casting a spell or using a non-bow skill.

do not use a bow you are an elementalist

Use the bow, your in pre-searing not DoA HM.

Have fun

There is one special purpose for a bow for all classes. Pulling.
If you see several groups of monsters walking around ahead of you, you can alert one or some of them to fight you while the rest dont discover you, so you dont have to fight all at once. Equip a longbow or flatbow, (they have the longest range) shoot 1 arrow and move back a bit. Then you can have some control over what you fight at once.
But this is not needed in pre, unless you go north of the wall and fight charr. Later in the game when you find tougher monsters this is a useful strategy.
But as said, you shouldnt really fight with the bow, once you have shot the arrow, you should re-equip your elementalist weapon and use spells to kill the enemy.

If you really want to fight using bow and arrows you should consider making a ranger for that.

Nothing wrong with Ele/Ranger in my opinion. You should be able to make a nice conjure build with either knock-down(Fire), cracked armor(Air) or slows(Water) that will do quite nicely in many areas of the game.

Don't promote ignorance on Guild Wars, teach people on how to play their chosen profession properly as it's meant to be played.

Agreed. My first character was E/Ra started in Prophecies. Having a pet does no harm and does not unduly restrict your skill bar early in the game, because you don't have many skills anyway. The pet doesn't really start to become a liability until you hit the Crystal Desert, by which time you have enough ele skills to make a passable full bar. And the pet becomes useful again when you go against the Doppelganger to Ascend.

I have started several characters in Prophecies that went */Ra to get a pet, and there is no overwhelmingly good reason not to do so. Especially now that you only need to give up one skill slot to bring the pet rather than two. When the time is right, you will give it up and move on, with no harm done.

I agree too. When first starting out, getting a pet is a good idea. As you say, you have room in your skill bar for charm/comfort pet (1 at a time), and the pet acts as a body blocker and a bit of extra damage. You don't need any points in Beast Mastery either, since the health and armor of the pet depends only on it's own level. (If you have few "left over" attribute points, though, putting them in Beast Mastery will increase the damage done by the pet.)
I recently took a Paragon through Nightfall as a P/Ra. (Well, only /Ra until the mainland.)

@OP(rd151) - I also would say that, while having the pet is a good idea, you should be concentrating on the Elementalist primary. If you really want to use a bow I would suggest you start a Ranger.
Btw, it's possible to have up to 4 weapons (sets) equipped. In the Inventory (I) window there is a button for "weapon sets" When you click on it, you can enable up to 4 "slots". You can then put a bow in 1 (or 2, or 3, or 4) slots and easily switch between them by clicking on the icon or using F1-F4.

Btw, @some others - you may not recall the early days of playing your first character, but sometimes a weapon from a different class can be the best weapon you have at the time, so it's silly to say "you shouldn't use a bow".

Although that may be true in some circumstances as with A/D for critscythe or A/R for critbow, I don't see what E/R can do what R/E cannot replicate.

A question to people that support being E/R using a bow to attack; would you prefer to use W/Mo partyhealer INSTEAD of a Mo/W stance-monk?

I made a R/N with a pet and minions because I wanted to have an army. I found out soon enough it wasn't working as intended, but it got me through presear nonetheless

Because when you decide to delete your E/R and build an R/E instead, you may not find that bow. Read the post again and you'll understand what he's talking about. He's got an E/R because he wanted an E/R. And now he's found a good bow, so for now, using that bow may be his best option.

I don't believe anyone is supporting the idea of E/Ra running around with a bow as a general principle. We are talking about a new character in pre-Searing. New characters are dependant on loot to get better equipment, and a better bow may drop before a better staff or wand.

Furthermore, there are a few ranger skills in pre that are about as powerful early on as anything an ele gets, since a low level character does not have many points to put in anything. If an E/Ra wants to stand on a hill in pre and take pot shots at level 1 grawl using Ignite Arrows and Read the Wind, then he's probably going to do about as much damage as he would with any ele skill he gets in pre.

It doesn't hurt a character of ANY profession to spend a little time learning to use the weapons and skills of another profession. Having some idea of how your teammates are looking at things when you advance in the game, or having some experience of the strengths and limitations of the henchie professions, is not a bad thing. It's also a way to learn if there is a profession that you might like better than the one you chose the first time around.

Exactly. To paraphrase vBeryl, "would you rather attack with a bow that does 7-12 damage, or an ele staff that does 2-5 damage?"

I would rather attack with my +5E staff so I have more capacity to spam FLARE.

As others have said, it's pre-Searing. Play around, experiment and enjoy it. Common sense will often be able to tell you what's good and what's bad.

You can also read the profession guides (here in the forums and on wiki) to get a bit more info on how they generally tick.