R/W FoW solo Forest Build

I need to give credit where credit is due, so much thanks to LAMS3K, and his guide for the the info and inspiration! And also to Rachtoh for his FoW spider thread, which I also used for inspiration.


My build:
R/W

11+1 Expertise
10+1+3 Marksmanship
10 Tactics

Read the Wind
Distracting Shot
Savage Shot
Escape [E]
Dodge
Heal Sig
Watch Yourself
Shields Up.

My Equipment:

I use full druids.

Weapon 1: Firey Flatbow of Pruning(20%)
Weapon 2: Short Bow of Defense.

How to:
I'm gonna assume you know how to get to the Forest, I'll try to post something on getting there later.

Before you flame me on my choice of an elite. Escape serves two purposes. Two running skills make the run there much easier cause Ranger speed skills take longer than sprint to recharge. But besides that, Escape gives you 75% chance to dodge attacks. Which is very important to this build. With the stats I have listed you can keep either Escape or "Shields Up" going constantly. You'll have at least a 50% chance to dodge all the attacks you'll face here. Watch yourself Recharges pretty fast with Flat/Short bows, so you can/need to keep that up constantly. Maintaining RtW isn't that hard either, and it makes this go much faster. Shepherds aren't a problem as long as you stay out of their spell range. Make sure you have flatbow equiped and If they get too close run away, and wait for them to reset. The Wood Spirits can hit hard, but as long as you keep switching back and forth between Escape and Shields up, and using Watch Yourself everytime it recharges, the damage is easily managed with Heal sig. You will have to interrupt Troll ungent, or it will take alot longer to kill spirits than is neccesary. I'm actually proud of how fast I can kill Armored Cave Spiders with this build. You want to aggro only one, but I've managed to kill them both with a dual aggro. Move slowly to get them to drop out of trees, or pop out of ground, then run back and let their spring and poison wear off. Then equip the short bow and move in to attack. Savage Shot their Apply Poison, and distract shot their Heal Spring, and the rest is butter. They usually die before you have to heal, just keep interrupting their apply poison, and Heal spring should be interrupted pretty regularly by your normal attack, but using distract shot takes away any chance they can get it off.

I'll want to post a video of this. Any suggestions on what to use to capture it?


<EDIT> Switched Dodge for Stormchaser.

Hypercam 2 works well, and nice build man. I'm glad to see people being creative and coming up with new ideas

i'll give this a shot on my Ranger once i hit lvl 20.

Very nice I would like to see it in action. Ill definetly be trying this out once I do

Nice work.

please, Shepherds not Shepherd's and Shields not Shield's -_-

Great, In the other Thread For a Ranger Mesmer Thay say Healing spring has a 20 second timer on it, thay both cast it every 20 again so u can learn how 2 interupt Great Job i do it with a Ranger Mesmer atm but ill try this build soon GJ.

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Just curious on the use of a Short Bow for interruption over a Recurve Bow, and Flat Bow over Long Bow. Any reason for this that I'm missing?

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I must say, i love this build. It's better than R/Me because poison is not main damage dealer, it takes longer for me to kill things, but i have yet to die. Although, I use a long bow one. This is because I can get close to spiders and have the effect of a short bow and intrutpt healing ans poison, and i can stay away from everythign else and take less damage.

Gota thankyou for the guide Cleared full forest in about and hour 30 mins, 3 shards and a few keys

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don't you want dodge instead of storm chaser? storm chasers lasts 9 seconds, 25% fast, at 10 energy..dodge is 9 secs, 33% ,5 energy

both are 30 recharge...

am I missing something? ( except that dodge ends when you attack ? )

storm chaser is like 18 seconds long...

no it's not..not with the attribute set-up in the OP

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First of all, I think this is a great build. But I'm having trouble getting past some of the Shepherds who use Lightning magic. Some Shepherd groups are as advertised, But others have maybe 1 (or 2?) that execute lighting attks (Chain Lightning, Lightning Strike, etc) that have ended my R/W solo runs rather abruptly. Has anyone dealt with this? Any suggestions?

Good build, I'll be sure and try it soon .

Joe, all Spirit Sheperds use Air magic (ie. Chain Lightning, Lightning Strike, Iron Mist). What you need to do if your getting hit by those spells is walk backwards. It's a bit of trial and error, but you need to get out of spell cast range, and into your flat/longbow range. What I do is attack one, and walk back a few steps, once they all start wanding me, and I see no spell cast animations, I start attacking.

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OK Great TYVM, I will try this manuever out. Took a while to get the timing down for the spider interruption while keeping my defensive skills up... but I picked up on timing count. After interrupting poison and healing spring, they usually do 3 called shot skills before trying poison again... After I believe 2 or 3 rounds of this, they'll try and cast healing spring, and then the cycle starts over. Anxious to try now that America has had favor for quite a while now....

I can see why it works, but I can't see this replacing the R/Me build in a million years though.

If you are even slightly competant you will know that poison is only a great damage dealer if you actually use it on all of the Shepherds, killing them 1 at a time you've just wasted your elite slot. I think you've really overdone the evasion too, Escape AND Shields Up? I only need Storm Chaser to get me to the forest and that supplies every bit of energy i need vs Shephards (5 energy per attack ftw)

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