Conjure Ele nerf changes R/E power build...

People rate the zealous string so highly... don't the -1 regen annoy ppl? Constant energy degenaration, the only time i see it is really good is when you couple it with barrage but then again a vampiric string seems great in that situation too but yet they don't favour it much..

Anyway if you want to stay as R/E and like marksman wager why dont u try using Quickening Zephyr instead of serpents quickness or along with it. I mean you just summon it and it stays there for really long and doubles recharge rate.. downside is 30% extra energy but that really isn't a problem with high expertise and marksman wager going. So if you do that then I usually like to do marksman wager + penetrating atk and you can cast penetrating atk so much quicker..

Also I don't really think dual shot should be there, atleast not without kindle arrows or ignite arrows. I recommend you replace that with apply poison for some DoT damage, it will go well with hunters shot. I LIKE this info. And yes, I'm doing this due to ANET'S decision because if they DIDN'T nerf conjure, I'd be fine. I'm not going to complain but I do want people to stop thinking that I am. There's always an alternative and thanks to this post. I think I found it. Though I wonder if my teammates would mind that nature ritual? [shudder]

Little note: Dual Shot's double hit supposed to affect Marksman's in the fact that both arrows for 6 or so energy will net me 16 energy when they hit. I've set up the recycle times for these things to overlap ever so slightly because I'd rather have a skill always ready to fly then to wait an entire second for one to recharge.

I'm not sure if I'm overestimating the damage. Who gets point blank? Warriors. Who's weak to lightning damage? Warriors. From what I've seen, the 60 dmg from the Frozen Burst will be toned down, that's a given, but the 60 + 25% armor penetration from the Lightning Touch should double over. And again, it's not just damage, 9 seconds of slowing the warrior down should be enough to get the hell away.

Yes, I know that Ranger's don't have the highest dps in existence but that's the drawback of fighting ranged. Flatbows have an obscene range from all the bows I've tested and since their rate of fire is well known to be crap. I've decided to just feed the dps with nothing but special attacks. This ranger shouldn't do a single normal shot at all and just chain-fire all of his special skills back to back.

HOWEVER, since there's wilderness survival involved, I can easily flip this build around to be a more map oriented trap ranger. But I'm still interested in massive longest [not long, LOOONGEST] range damage. Thanks to the above poster for helping! ^_^

But I'm still interested in massive longest [not long, LOOONGEST] range damage. Well, if you truly are interested in massive damage, for a Ranger/Elementalist, the four best damage buffs are:

1) Tiger's Fury [Stance]. You do 50% more damage during it's duration (you get 2/3 time/attack, which means 3/2 attacks/time, which is a 50% damage increase), and that's not only 50% more damage from your bow, but 50% more from each other damage buff you're using.

2) Kindle Arrows [Preparation]. Alternately, Ignite Arrows which does less damage to individual targets but way more damage to groups. For sniping an individual target, however, Kindle Arrows is your best bet.

3) Conjure Element [Enchantment].

4) Favorable Winds [Nature Ritual]. Yes, it's only +6, but it lasts a good long time, and remember Tiger's Fury is boosting all your damage buffs another 50%.

All of these have the advantage of reasonably long durations, thus don't actually require much energy (so screw the Zealous bowstring, you don't need it), and they don't step on each other. The disadvantage is you're now looking at a five attribute build (when you throw in Expertise with the attributes for the four skills above, probably 10/8/8/8/7, 12/9/9/8/8 after mask and minor runes), but what extra damage you'd gain by maxing out any of the attributes behind any of these skills is less than what you'd lose by giving up one of the other skills.

How do these skills compare with other damage skills? Quite well, actually. Consider just the weakest one: Favorable Winds. That's only +6 per attack, but over 6 seconds, you're going to get 4-5 attacks in (remember Tiger's Fury), so that's +24-30 extra damage over six seconds, say +24 on average (not 27 because Tiger's Fury will only be up 90% of the time). By way of comparison, Power Shot only adds +18 damage every 6 seconds, at a considerably larger cost in terms of mana. So even the worst of these is a better choice than something like Power/Precision Shot for a "massive damage" ranger. Conjure Element is significantly better, and Kindle Arrows better still.

Of course, this isn't an either/or situation -- you can use all these buffs and a couple skills like Power Shot too. The buffs only take four of your eight skills slots, you can still do other stuff too. In fact, add:

5) Dual Shot. This one is a no brainer: that 75% rule only applies to the actual damage from the bow itself, all the buffs take full effect on both arrows, so you'd be insane not to include it in this kind of build.

So, I'd say those five skills really form the basis for a real "massive ranged damage" build. You can choose to pass up on one or two, but each one you pass up on is going to decrease the amount of damage you do, at which point you're not really looking for damage as much as other things (e.g. using Frozen Burst for the slow effect; the extra damage it gives you is small compared to most other skills that you could select and actually use more than twice a minute -- at that point, you're pretty much abandoning the concept of a massive damage ranger in favor of a "dirty tricks" ranger: less damage, more slowdowns/interrupts/conditions/etc).