Pack Hunter

A Pack Hunter is a ranger build with a paragon secondary designed to spread conditions and utilize an Animal Companion for additional damage and utility. Pack hunters are effective in many PvP types, including arenas and Alliance Battles.

Equipment
This build relies on spears to spread conditions while dealing a good chunk of damage, so different spear mods are preferred for each task. A Furious spear is most common, as it builds Adrenaline for attack skills fastest, although some prefer a Vampiric or even a Zealous spear. A shield with Fortitude is also helpful.

Skills
Barbed Spear, a low-cost unconditional bleeding skill is highly favored as usual ranger bow bleeding skills are conditional. When paired with Apply Poison or Poison Tip Signet long lasting high rate degeneration that can be spread and maintained easily. Additional spear attacks such as Blazing Spear, Maiming Spear and Merciless Spear can be used to generate other conditions such as burning, cripple and deep wound.

The pet skills vary, depending on the purpose of the build - rangers seeking to increase their durability take Heal as One, while rangers seeking to maximize their pet's damage output will take Enraged Lunge. Rampage as One was also used for a time, but is now mostly unused in favor of the other two. Otyugh's Cry is frequently used to provide unblockable damage pressure. Due to the energy requirements when bringing energy-based skills such as Spear of Lightning and Maiming Spear, consider bringing Scavenger Strike or 1-2 long recharging Beast Mastery skills that have lower upkeep such as Call of Haste, Call of Protection, Disrupting Lunge, Feral Aggression and Run as One.

Poisonous Bite is a suitable alternative which may benefit from pet boosting skills such as being unblockable and offer advantage compared to the previously mentioned poison-application skills. Also, spreading out degeneration abilities between pet and master ensure that some degeneration can be applied if one of the attackers is blinded. Condition removal is less frequently used as blind usually affects only one target, allowing either the pet or the user to continue to attack.

Counters
Blocking and anti-melee hexes are the biggest threat. If possible, fit some skills in to get around these - Otyugh's Cry for example.