Longbow Untamed

December 2022

Untamed is a bruiser-style build that takes advantage of ranged damage combined with a melee oneshot and good area pressure. Untamed excels in ranked games due to its versatility and flexibility as a profession.

An important note about Untamed: It’s is one of the two classes in the game that has an F6 and F7. Binding these to something that you can easily reach so you won’t have to skill-click in a fight.

Build Fundamentals

Untamed is Arenanet’s attempt to take the AI component out of Ranger builds by giving you manual control over all of your pet’s actions. This is great if you’re familiar with ranger since your pet won’t try to cast random auto attacks when you need a cc, but it also means Untamed can’t get carried by random pet abilities. It is extremely important that you know how each pet you plan on using works before you start playing Untamed.

You can play Untamed a few different ways but the most effective is as a rotational dps. Unnatural Traversal lets you get to fights quickly, meaning you can move between 2v2s and 3v3s around the map and get kills. Untamed is a decent teamfighter, but its potential falls off in all-out engagements into coordinated teams due to the amount of Weakness and projectile block in the current meta. Especially into Tempest support, you may find more success out rotating the other team rather than trying to grind them down with pure damage.

Damage

Almost everything on Untamed does good damage if you can land it, the difficulty comes from managing the pet attacks. While it sounds simple, the pet AI often gets confused by terrain and can walk back and forth trying to execute simple attacks if your target is moving. Venomous Outburst is your best tool to get around this as it lets you move your pet directly to the target. If you’re having trouble, skills like Lightning Breath and Smoke Assault are easy to land since they track the target.

Make sure you’re using Barrage as much as possible it’s an excellent zoning tool due to its high damage-over-time. This can either be used to force opponents off a node if you want a decap or to add extra pressure on a down in a teamfight.

When in doubt, auto attack. Especially with longbow, you should never just be standing there waiting to do something. If you don’t have any cooldowns, use Long Range Shot while you let your pet chase someone or look for better positioning. Longbow has the longest range in the game and you always want to be taking advantage of that, especially on maps with lots of verticality like Khylo.

Crowd Control

Untamed has good cc on both weapons and on your pet abilities. Hilt Bash on greatsword is probably your best cc, and it’s how you set up a lot of your combos, but greatsword also has Counterattack Kick if someone hits your block. A good tip is to hold your Counterattack Kick for a few seconds after your block instead of pressing it immediately so people won’t be expecting it. Point-Blank Shot is a good knockback that is typically used to set up Rapid Fire, but it can also be used to bait stunbreaks or other important cooldowns before you go for an all-in burst.

Last you have Takedown on your Smokescale. Try to use this to continue a cc chain once you start it with Hilt Bash or simply to interrupt important skills. Keep in mind that it can be unreliable since the pet sometimes gets confused by random terrain and may take a while to actually cast the ability.

Sustain

Untamed has good passive sustain, but it is often reliant on kiting, Stealth and using your longbow to deal damage from ranged. "We Heal As One!" is an excellent heal on a short cooldown, but unlike other ranger builds, it doesn’t give you any cleanse. Your best source of cleanse is Mutate Conditions, which will remove all conditions and replace them with Vulnerability, you also have additional low cooldown cleansing from Cleansing Unleash and Sigil of Cleansing.

This build has two ways to access Stealth, one of the easiest ways of doing so is by connecting Hunter's Shot onto an enemy. The other option is to blast or leap through your Smokescale Smoke Cloud with abilities such as Swoop, Rending Vines, Tail Swipe and Lesser Call of the Wild.

Your cantrips will all give you barrier from Nature's Shield, as will "Protect Me!", giving you access to on-demand health if needed. Last but certainly not least, Forest's Fortification is a flat 50% damage reduction along with Resistance, Stability, Resolution and Superspeed.