Guild Wars 2

I have the full GWEN + ranger. I main a shout warrior on raids but my first character was a ranger. After patch a lot of players started to cry because they dont like to adapt. Some days after the patch everybody think the same again: nice, but still not good enough.
I can talk about wvw only, where i play. Pets leeching our power while give us nothing on the battlefield or in/front of the tower they die randomly or do nothing. While roaming the places are too big for pets, an average player can kite them to hell.
What do you think? What will or what should be the next update?

McWolfy.5924:

I have the full GWEN + ranger. I main a shout warrior on raids but my first character was a ranger. After patch a lot of players started to cry because they dont like to adapt. Some days after the patch everybody think the same again: nice, but still not good enough.
I can talk about wvw only, where i play. Pets leeching our power while give us nothing on the battlefield or in/front of the tower they die randomly or do nothing. While roaming the places are too big for pets, an average player can kite them to hell.
What do you think? What will or what should be the next update?

personally, i think we need less ranger threads on the profession balance forum (because theyre just going to become flame bait) and more threads on the ranger forum.

rangers need what theyve always needed: a class mechanic that works.

either:
give pets a “spirit” mode similar to passive mode. while in spirit mode, pets follow the ranger as spirits, providing species-specific passive and pet-specific active bonuses to the ranger. Pets in spirit mode cannot attack or be attacked.

or:
pets simply take massively reduced aoe damage and can hit moving targets. anet has never provided any logic for not doing the former and for some reason believes doing the latter would make pve too difficult. personally, i think if they are too worried about pve players being able to kite they should either A) have more confidence in pve’rs or simply make the attack range of ranger pets longer than a normal mobs (say they have a reach of 260 instead of 130 or something), perferably in conjunction with making agility training baseline.

Raven.9603:

McWolfy.5924:

I have the full GWEN + ranger. I main a shout warrior on raids but my first character was a ranger. After patch a lot of players started to cry because they dont like to adapt. Some days after the patch everybody think the same again: nice, but still not good enough.
I can talk about wvw only, where i play. Pets leeching our power while give us nothing on the battlefield or in/front of the tower they die randomly or do nothing. While roaming the places are too big for pets, an average player can kite them to hell.
What do you think? What will or what should be the next update?

personally, i think we need less ranger threads on the profession balance forum (because theyre just going to become flame bait) and more threads on the ranger forum.

rangers need what theyve always needed: a class mechanic that works.

either:
give pets a “spirit” mode similar to passive mode. while in spirit mode, pets follow the ranger as spirits, providing species-specific passive and pet-specific active bonuses to the ranger. Pets in spirit mode cannot attack or be attacked.

or:
pets simply take massively reduced aoe damage and can hit moving targets. anet has never provided any logic for not doing the former and for some reason believes doing the latter would make pve too difficult. personally, i think if they are too worried about pve players being able to kite they should either A) have more confidence in pve’rs or simply make the attack range of ranger pets longer than a normal mobs (say they have a reach of 260 instead of 130 or something), perferably in conjunction with making agility training baseline.

Anet you need to hire this person.

Personaly i think in wvw the aspect or spirit mode as you call is the only sollution for wvw players

McWolfy.5924:

Personaly i think in wvw the aspect or spirit mode as you call is the only sollution for wvw players

Would be handy in dungeons as well if anyone still does those. Oh and probably world bosses too.

McWolfy.5924:

Personaly i think in wvw the aspect or spirit mode as you call is the only sollution for wvw players

Yes and no. There’s a lot to consider.

1. Do the buffs stack. If I have 5 rangers in my zerg do I get x5 the buff?
2. If they don’t stack, how many are there so that I don’t run into a “sorry we already have 3 rangers, bring another class” situation.
3. If they do stack how weak are they going to be to counter massive buff bloat? Will they be so weak a single Ranger still doesn’t make enough of an impact to matter?

It’s a great idea, but would need a scaling system, not a static one to work properly. It’s the same as when we all ask for more pet armor/health in WvW. Make it a static amount and it breaks roaming but make it scale with enemies in a radius and it balances for both modes.

Substance E.4852:

McWolfy.5924:

Personaly i think in wvw the aspect or spirit mode as you call is the only sollution for wvw players

Yes and no. There’s a lot to consider.

1. Do the buffs stack. If I have 5 rangers in my zerg do I get x5 the buff?
2. If they don’t stack, how many are there so that I don’t run into a “sorry we already have 3 rangers, bring another class” situation.
3. If they do stack how weak are they going to be to counter massive buff bloat? Will they be so weak a single Ranger still doesn’t make enough of an impact to matter?

It’s a great idea, but would need a scaling system, not a static one to work properly. It’s the same as when we all ask for more pet armor/health in WvW. Make it a static amount and it breaks roaming but make it scale with enemies in a radius and it balances for both modes.

The idea as suggested originally was that a pet’s “spirit mode” would only buff the ranger. Specifically, the ranger is given a specific buff, according to species, that affects only himself. It’s not a group buff, just something to ameliorate the loss of DPS and utility that comes when pets are non-viable.

So, a moderate damage boost for the individual ranger’s damage and something to approximate the pet’s F2 ability. Some would be easier to replicate than others.

I think it should buff the ranger and if you trait for it affect the party. The actual meta is 2 gua 2 warr and 1 more gwen. If this buff stack with others it could take a part as the 5th party member.
Example +pvt and remove condi on evry x hit if you have a bear, + crit, crit dmg and bleed on every y hit for cats, condi and poison after spiders etc…
Other classes give 180 stat points without class mechanic sacrafice. I think rangers should do minimum the same or more.

McWolfy.5924:

I think it should buff the ranger and if you trait for it affect the party. The actual meta is 2 gua 2 warr and 1 more gwen. If this buff stack with others it could take a part as the 5th party member.
Example +pvt and remove condi on evry x hit if you have a bear, + crit, crit dmg and bleed on every y hit for cats, condi and poison after spiders etc…
Other classes give 180 stat points without class mechanic sacrafice. I think rangers should do minimum the same or more.

Spotter and Frost Spirit send their regards.

Frost spirit is nerfed to hell. Check it. Spotter is nerfed too, because crit nerf and its not a class mechanism. We are talking about sacraficing our pets for bonus

McWolfy.5924:

Frost spirit is nerfed to hell. Check it. Spotter is nerfed too, because crit nerf and its not a class mechanism. We are talking about sacraficing our pets for bonus

I was under the impression they fixed FS again. I haven’t checked it out myself because I find the PvE in this game to be awful.

I don’t like removing the active effect of the pets for a passive “remove condi on x hits.”
The passive/spirit pet should grant 1 stat bonus (depending on the pet) to 5 players and the pet active should now originate from the player.

They should also buff the pets in the way stated in the op (larger attack radius. speed buff, etc.) so that it is still worthwhile to bring a pet if you want to.

Basically switch passive to stow, which activates the buff, but only allow players to stow or activate pets when they are out of combat.

This would require reworking a lot of traits and skills like rampage as one, but it would be very nice to be able to have the choice to equip a wolf to help CC a necro or stow the pet to prevent a thief from cloak and daggering off a brain dead npc.

They changed AE’s way back in the day and I don’t remember what it was about them they changed.

But would simply changing AE’s to prioritize players over minions be overpowered? If fewer than 5 players, the pet would still be hit. But if 5 or more players, the AE’s would hit players instead. This likely wouldn’t be enough, but would at least help. Short of this, there’s no other way then just a blanket XX% less damage from AEs in WvW only.

As to spirits in particular, they’re awful and need to be changed entirely. Spirits should just ‘posses’ your primary pet. They would always be active and if you swapped pets or your pet died, the spirit would go on cooldown. The activated abilities of pets would have an internal cooldown of XX seconds and would simply be attached to your pets F2 ability. The passive effects should have a baseline 100% chance to proc with an iCD for balance.

This change has the advantage of removing a lot of the body blocking that everyone complained about while spirit rangers were still a thing. It would make the pet a more vital part of the class instead of the throw away trash we think of them currently. It would also remove the need for pretty much all of the spirit traits in the nature tree which would give ANet a chance to finally give this class some group utility to offer a zerg/guild/group in PvP and WvW.

This in conjunction with fixing the AE dilemma and we’d start to have a functioning class mechanic. After this they would need to do things like find a way to allow pets to hit moving targets reliably, an almost total redesign of the F2 mechanic so the pets could actually land them and they had a common activation time, and a pass-over of the more questionable mechanics (pigs overall, bird casting animations, moa standing still etc etc etc).

I feel that rangers are in a good spot, except for the following situations: WvWvW zerg fights and dungeons with hard hitting bosses and mobs. The pet tends to die in both situations very fast. Especially in WvWvW, which has lower health pool for the pet than pve. The WvWvW pet health pool should not be upped for the pve levels, as that would give even over 50k health to some pets = overpowered. Ranger is absolutely super easy face roll (with the right build) in open world pve. One can easily solo most champions and group events, even just abusing the GS auto attack chain evade, thus leaving the ranger AFK, not even clicking any skills and still defeating the champion and completing the group event. Ranger is strong in roaming and by far the best profession for long range sniping, thus killing the squishies and keeping the downed from reviving themselves.

Here is one change I would like to see:
F3 = Return to me, should happen without a delay even if the pet is already in combat. Now one needs to put the pet first into “avoid combat mode” and then press F3. And if one forgets to click “guard” in the next combat moment, then the pet doesn’t do anything. Follow me should follow the ranger more closely (stay within 100 range) so the clever ranger player can more easily avoid the AoE circles (now pet just stands there next to ranger and gets killed).

One possible change: F3 toggles between “avoid combat” and “guard”.

The 2 big issues I have with ranger:

• pets need some innate AOE dmg reduction, like 50%
• traps need 900+ range, 600 range traited doesn’t cut it

both of these are from a WVW persepctive

Longbow needs some more looks at- they might have gone a bit overboard with making it good.

And aside from that, as people said above, ranger pets need work. A lot of work. Let us stow them in combat. Let us permastow the pets, so they don’t pop out when we leave/enter water or sprain our ankles. Let us bind the “stow pet” button to a key. Let us give them better direction controls. Most importantly, let the pets do what player characters can do and attack while moving so that their actions are more fluid and effective.

McWolfy.5924:

Frost spirit is nerfed to hell.

Wake up. It’s fixed. Even the internal cooldown in the tooltip is gone.

Lazze.9870:

McWolfy.5924:

Frost spirit is nerfed to hell.

Wake up. It’s fixed. Even the internal cooldown in the tooltip is gone.

You are right. Sorry

Rangers struggle in AOE ridden content. Such as some open world PvE (Orr), Dungeons, some Living Story instances and WvW zerging. Rangers also struggle with granting meaningfull group benefits in WvW.

What they need is for the pet(s) to have a separate resistance to these kind of area attacks, first and foremost, and to have pet vitality increased by half of what was given to PvE (this should prevent pets from being super OP in small scale skirmishes).

Further ranger needs meaningfull party buffs. A good start would be to change Stability Training to apply 4 seconds of stability to allies in an AOE (480 radius would be good) when swapping pet. Add a 25 second ICD to keep it from being too strong.
Further building upon this, spirits should be given get toughness and vitality increased by 50% for WvW only, and make spirits completely immune to blind, cripple, chill, immobilized and torment.

This would be a good start to make rangers more useful without requiring the player to have years of experience, battling the class design.

Raven.9603:

McWolfy.5924:

I have the full GWEN + ranger. I main a shout warrior on raids but my first character was a ranger. After patch a lot of players started to cry because they dont like to adapt. Some days after the patch everybody think the same again: nice, but still not good enough.
I can talk about wvw only, where i play. Pets leeching our power while give us nothing on the battlefield or in/front of the tower they die randomly or do nothing. While roaming the places are too big for pets, an average player can kite them to hell.
What do you think? What will or what should be the next update?

personally, i think we need less ranger threads on the profession balance forum (because theyre just going to become flame bait) and more threads on the ranger forum.

rangers need what theyve always needed: a class mechanic that works.

either:
give pets a “spirit” mode similar to passive mode. while in spirit mode, pets follow the ranger as spirits, providing species-specific passive and pet-specific active bonuses to the ranger. Pets in spirit mode cannot attack or be attacked.

or:
pets simply take massively reduced aoe damage and can hit moving targets. anet has never provided any logic for not doing the former and for some reason believes doing the latter would make pve too difficult. personally, i think if they are too worried about pve players being able to kite they should either A) have more confidence in pve’rs or simply make the attack range of ranger pets longer than a normal mobs (say they have a reach of 260 instead of 130 or something), perferably in conjunction with making agility training baseline.

Remind me…why aren’t you a dev at Anet again?

The ability to control, at least, 1 more pet skill.

Ex:
Wolf knockdown
Moa heal
Boar charge
Devourer knockback (or evade)
Bear endure pain
Drake tail swipe
Spider immobilize
Cat… whatever
Bird Swiftness

The thing people always forget with pets; as long as jumping over a 2" curb breaks them, they’ll never be useful.

Eurantien.4632:

The ability to control, at least, 1 more pet skill.

Ex:
Wolf knockdown
Moa heal
Boar charge
Devourer knockback (or evade)
Bear endure pain
Drake tail swipe
Spider immobilize
Cat… whatever
Bird Swiftness

This would be my first choice as a change as well. It’d make using the pet be more about skill and less about luck. Plus certaion skills like the bear’s Endure Pain and the devourer evade are REACTIONARY skills and need to be timed correctly to be at all useful. The AI can’t do that, but the player can.

Misanthropologist.4693:

McWolfy.5924:

I think it should buff the ranger and if you trait for it affect the party. The actual meta is 2 gua 2 warr and 1 more gwen. If this buff stack with others it could take a part as the 5th party member.
Example +pvt and remove condi on evry x hit if you have a bear, + crit, crit dmg and bleed on every y hit for cats, condi and poison after spiders etc…
Other classes give 180 stat points without class mechanic sacrafice. I think rangers should do minimum the same or more.

Spotter and Frost Spirit send their regards.

I’ll be sure to send them a thank you card when they get a WvW guild to finally give a crap about Rangers…

Spirit pet mode would be very useful.

I like the spirit pet idea. But my idea is to give the pet a “Protect” mode.

It would be a third mode the pet could be put into like “Guard” and “Avoid Combat” modes. (Guard should be renamed Attack imo because it doesn’t really guard you it just runs off and attacks and then gets killed)

In Protect Mode, the pet would stay near you and attack anyone who comes within a certain range of you. But the pet would not run off to attack someone that you are attacking or someone that is far away. Because that’s when the pet gets in trouble.

This would be very useful for WvW so the pet doesn’t run off and get AoE’d to death.

pet evade on f3, a great idea from ranger, like the normal evade cd of the player. so the vigor pets can gain from us via traits would be usefull.

the spirit idea would be okay when the pet died.

people should hold in mind that anet is against balancing different in the game modes.
The most ideas for wvw ranger would be okay for wvw, but pvp its not.
In WvW our stalker can shout the 5 might stacks, run into the crowd, die, and give the spirit buff as last “huurrrrraaayy” and the WvWers are happy.
In PvP its so that the pet dies not so often, but when because of swap cd or big fights in mid, then the ranger have problems because we only have 70% dmg. A little buff from defeted pets would be nice if balanced.
So interesting tactics can evolve and enemys can think on their own “better accept that pet attacks or let the ranger gain this buff?”

It’s honestly more about the utility than the damage.

Rangers can’t really build into a role that can provide sufficient amounts of both. Or one or the other better than any other given class.

I mean LB destroyer does plenty of damage. I hate the pet mechanic, but simply buffing solo ranger at this point isn’t feasible with the updates to signets and various weapon skills. Support S/W spirits is pretty good, but it has no real damage or ranged abilities. The utility is killable. Pets are killable. AOE coverage and disabling effects is poor relative to the necro. Buffing support ad durability are also low relative to many other builds.

What has led to the GWEN meta is a realization that those classes can provide not only an incredible amount of damage, but have some of the best group support and utility options in the game. Simply put, a group facerolling damage and timing for one ability is going to kill faster and die slower, since more time can just be spent on attacking rather than going through a diverse set of moves and channels + active defenses. The ranger doesn’t provide enough of both boons and damage as a class to warrant its use in the zerg/party meta; it can spec into anything and everything, but simply put, it’s just never as potent in what it’s trying to do.

What really allows the ranger to be different in the GvG/ZvZ environment is in it’s name – range. The problem is that even this very advantageous combat style is so easily negated by what’s already in the meta, not even mentioning its dependency on multi-hit attacks versus AOE retal and pet DPS/utility where it often dies. A necro can provide similar damage, but is MUCH tankier, and has a massive number of AOE damage and battlefield control abilities while such a ranger has very little.

So what really needs to occur for them to be included in the meta is for the allowance of rangers to gain a particular edge in one role that most other classes can’t do. The problem with this, though, is that they’d likely just replace something else when this is achieved, ultimately putting another class or multiple classes in the same position.

So to really fix them? There’s not much of a way. Allowing them to counter their natural counters through active gameplay decisions and building is probably a start (I.E., limited-time un-reflectable projectiles on a utility to offset reflect utilities, thus making the ranger possibly need to choose between movespeed, damage, or a stunbreak/evade), and simply better gameplay development decisions which support diverse playstyle mechanisms rather than allowing for min-maxed GWEN to just roll through it all without difficulties; such as shutting down boon sharing in certain encounters, adding more boon corruption/removal, etc.

It’s not just a utility question though. Look at Thief for example. In a GvG sense, they aren’t brought for poisons or stuns. They’re purely brought for damage. One would think that a Ranger now being able to ‘backstab from 1500 yards’ (to use a phrase from another thread) the class would have found a niche it can fill. Unfortunately, the defensivce options available to the class are completely underwhelming when it comes to a real organized WvW scenario. Nearly everything the class has excels at solo/small group scenarios (where the Thief’s options also dominate).

But in truth, even a Thief’s role in organized larger scale combat is tenuous. They’re brought largely because there’s no better option to taking out staff elementalists. An Ele can kite a whole group of Warriors for days and days.

At this point, the only way a Ranger would ever stand a chance at being noticed in WvW is if ANet introduced a new weapon for them. Even if spirits and pets worked, their utility doesn’t translate well to larger battles and the core problems with the class still exist. They’re ineffective at melee range because their weapons bring only damage and they sacrifice so much of that damage just to survive in melee range. At range spirit and pet utility wouldn’t work anyway.

I honestly don’t know what they could do to make people take notice of the class. All I can do is think of ways to fix the numerous issues the class has as a result of poor design. And nothing broken would help groups enough to bring Rangers up to GWEN levels.

Preparations. Like in GW1.

Not my idea, I saw it in another thread.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Preparation

Especially Ignite Arrows: Preparation. (24 seconds.) Your arrows deal 3…15…18 fire damage to target and foes adjacent to target.

And Choking Gas: Preparation. (1…10…12 seconds.) +1…7…8 damage. Spreads Choking Gas to foes adjacent to target. Choking Gas interrupts spells.

• A complete redesign of their Pet Mechanic.
• Nerfs to Rapid Fire and other things that synergize way too good with this KSill together
• Merges/Replacement of some Utility Skills in regard of the Pet Changes
• Merges of some Traits
• Staffs, Polearms, Whips as useable weapons
• Preparations (clearly shows that Johje never has played a Thief, otherwise he’d now that Choking Gas is now a Thief Skill under Shortbow …)
• The ability to play with 2 pets at the same time like a real Beast Master / Pet Combo Attacks at the cost, that Pets get weaker, therefore a portion of the Pet Damage gets moved to the Ranger, thus making the Ranger more independent from the Pet DPS.
• Pet Defense Mechanics, thus it becomes harder to deal damage to pets, so that they especialyl dont die in seconds from AoE Spam. / Better Pet A.I for mechanics like Pet Dodge Rolls/Evades

That are some serious points, which need to get looked at.

Preparations from gw1 <3 + stow pets for bonus = rangers in wvw gvg
(I think)

Eurantien.4632:

The ability to control, at least, 1 more pet skill.

Part of me strongly disagrees with this. There is a lot of skill when it comes to knowing when to pull back your pet at the right time to setup a good “3rd skill” on pets. At the very LEAST , however, Rangers should see the cooldowns on their pet skills; they shouldn’t be shooting in the dark like they currently do. It’s asinine that rangers still, after 2 years, have to practically guess when their pet is doing certain actions.

Secondly, the pathing issues are a thing but I suspect that it is something which is unfix-able considering how they changed iLeap.

I would love to see pets be able to attack and move at the same time, but I don’t know if that is going too far (in terms of balance), or if it is even possible at all with the engine Anet is working with; it could be a better compromise if their attacks simply have better tracking capability.

I think certain pets should be pretty survivable in teamfights, namely bears and drakes, but again Rangers have no tell on when their bear is using their invulnerability period. All pets in general struggle in teamfight scenarios which is a shame.

Above all, at the very LEAST, Rangers should see the skill cooldowns of their pets.

Orpheal.8263:

• Staffs, Polearms, Whips as useable weapons

This, I want this, especially the whips, love, love, love(!) the idea.

About the pets themselves, I don’t like the permastow idea, the core idea (as Anet wanted the class to work) is with a pet by the rangers side. I totally agree with that idea, even though the mechanic of the pet doesn’t work properly. That doesn’t mean that they do not have to fix it by the way, I simply abhor the fact that if I lose focus on my pet that it charges right into the first AoE it finds to die.

I definitely like the spirit pet idea though! It’s a simple enough mechanic which does make the pet a very valuable asset to the ranger.

Atherakhia.4086:

It’s not just a utility question though. Look at Thief for example. In a GvG sense, they aren’t brought for poisons or stuns. They’re purely brought for damage. One would think that a Ranger now being able to ‘backstab from 1500 yards’ (to use a phrase from another thread) the class would have found a niche it can fill. Unfortunately, the defensivce options available to the class are completely underwhelming when it comes to a real organized WvW scenario. Nearly everything the class has excels at solo/small group scenarios (where the Thief’s options also dominate).

But in truth, even a Thief’s role in organized larger scale combat is tenuous. They’re brought largely because there’s no better option to taking out staff elementalists. An Ele can kite a whole group of Warriors for days and days.

At this point, the only way a Ranger would ever stand a chance at being noticed in WvW is if ANet introduced a new weapon for them. Even if spirits and pets worked, their utility doesn’t translate well to larger battles and the core problems with the class still exist. They’re ineffective at melee range because their weapons bring only damage and they sacrifice so much of that damage just to survive in melee range. At range spirit and pet utility wouldn’t work anyway.

I honestly don’t know what they could do to make people take notice of the class. All I can do is think of ways to fix the numerous issues the class has as a result of poor design. And nothing broken would help groups enough to bring Rangers up to GWEN levels.

But that’s the thing – damage really doesn’t matter in this meta on the basis that utility en masse is strictly better. The reason why thieves are taken over rangers is because their burst is reliable, and even their utility is better than that of the ranger’s. And in reality, AOE pulsing poison is one of the best battlefield utility benefits in the game. Thieves can provide the following either better than or equal to rangers:

1.) AOE long-duration stealth to a commander/core group OR AOE long-duration stealth to periphery to more easily kill said back line

2.) On-demand blinds/smoke fields for further AOE stealth/mass blinds.

3.) Projectile reflection/deflection.

4.) AOE cripple and weakness.

5.) AOE Might, Fury, and Swiftness.

6.) AoE regen, heals, and damage bonuses.

7.) High-impact burst damage with an escape mechanism that cannot be prevented through reflect/deflect effects.

8.) Boon stripping on priority targets.

9.) Equivalent or better CC through BV, etc.

10.) Escape mechanisms/damage avoidance/engage potential.

11.) Better GvG-based downed state.

The best utility a ranger can provide to its group over the thief is Healing Spring due to its combination of effects which are better than what the thief can provide per cooldown cycle, and PBS. Simply put, the “ranged advantage” and high DPS/burst is not good enough to make them viable when fighting organized groups, as these groups, especially at the higher end, are built around fighting when outnumbered and winning due to a superior defense. Damage often means little here, as most fights are won due to the proper use of major utility effects. A ranger is not going to change the outcome of this kind of battle when all it can do is provide effects which the rest of the zerg can already do and more. Additionally, it’s now even more detrimental since so many will be using reflect/deflect effects thus possibly even causing the ranger to send its damage back to itself or allies.

Rangers have always dealt solid DPS. PvP is about burst and countering burst. WvW is about mitigation and steamrolling over other people while maximizing the effects of utility bombs. It’s the ranger’s undesirable utility which will always keep them doomed to the bottom-tier relative to other classes, no matter how high its damage gets, unless all other utility gets nerfed, which is quite unlikely.

DeceiverX.8361:

Atherakhia.4086:

It’s not just a utility question though. Look at Thief for example. In a GvG sense, they aren’t brought for poisons or stuns. They’re purely brought for damage. One would think that a Ranger now being able to ‘backstab from 1500 yards’ (to use a phrase from another thread) the class would have found a niche it can fill. Unfortunately, the defensivce options available to the class are completely underwhelming when it comes to a real organized WvW scenario. Nearly everything the class has excels at solo/small group scenarios (where the Thief’s options also dominate).

But in truth, even a Thief’s role in organized larger scale combat is tenuous. They’re brought largely because there’s no better option to taking out staff elementalists. An Ele can kite a whole group of Warriors for days and days.

At this point, the only way a Ranger would ever stand a chance at being noticed in WvW is if ANet introduced a new weapon for them. Even if spirits and pets worked, their utility doesn’t translate well to larger battles and the core problems with the class still exist. They’re ineffective at melee range because their weapons bring only damage and they sacrifice so much of that damage just to survive in melee range. At range spirit and pet utility wouldn’t work anyway.

I honestly don’t know what they could do to make people take notice of the class. All I can do is think of ways to fix the numerous issues the class has as a result of poor design. And nothing broken would help groups enough to bring Rangers up to GWEN levels.

But that’s the thing – damage really doesn’t matter in this meta on the basis that utility en masse is strictly better. The reason why thieves are taken over rangers is because their burst is reliable, and even their utility is better than that of the ranger’s. And in reality, AOE pulsing poison is one of the best battlefield utility benefits in the game. Thieves can provide the following either better than or equal to rangers:

1.) AOE long-duration stealth to a commander/core group OR AOE long-duration stealth to periphery to more easily kill said back line

2.) On-demand blinds/smoke fields for further AOE stealth/mass blinds.

3.) Projectile reflection/deflection.

4.) AOE cripple and weakness.

5.) AOE Might, Fury, and Swiftness.

6.) AoE regen, heals, and damage bonuses.

7.) High-impact burst damage with an escape mechanism that cannot be prevented through reflect/deflect effects.

8.) Boon stripping on priority targets.

9.) Equivalent or better CC through BV, etc.

10.) Escape mechanisms/damage avoidance/engage potential.

11.) Better GvG-based downed state.

The best utility a ranger can provide to its group over the thief is Healing Spring due to its combination of effects which are better than what the thief can provide per cooldown cycle, and PBS. Simply put, the “ranged advantage” and high DPS/burst is not good enough to make them viable when fighting organized groups, as these groups, especially at the higher end, are built around fighting when outnumbered and winning due to a superior defense. Damage often means little here, as most fights are won due to the proper use of major utility effects. A ranger is not going to change the outcome of this kind of battle when all it can do is provide effects which the rest of the zerg can already do and more. Additionally, it’s now even more detrimental since so many will be using reflect/deflect effects thus possibly even causing the ranger to send its damage back to itself or allies.

Rangers have always dealt solid DPS. PvP is about burst and countering burst. WvW is about mitigation and steamrolling over other people while maximizing the effects of utility bombs. It’s the ranger’s undesirable utility which will always keep them doomed to the bottom-tier relative to other classes, no matter how high its damage gets, unless all other utility gets nerfed, which is quite unlikely.

I would say that the Ranger now does have some utility in very large WvW groups if you can get several of them in a party and reliably tag the enemy commander/driver and pressure them with piercing arrows.

It can work but usually isn’t tremendously more effective than tagging the enemy driver and just dropping the hammer train on their head which brings us back to the original problem of “anything a Ranger can do, someone else can do better so why bother with ’em?”