Guild Wars 2

Out of all the classes, would you say ranger be the one you’d kick after the patch?

Then again, rangers were being kicked before patches, so I guess that’s a little redundant.

Lyndis.2584:

Out of all the classes, would you say ranger be the one you’d kick after the patch?

Then again, rangers were being kicked before patches, so I guess that’s a little redundant.

Will never kick any profession even rangers in any dungeon. However 2 is the absolute maximum I would ever take in every dungeon except COF p1. Sadly that is the same limit I would say for necros as well.

Any condition class really, you only need one. A good condition necro can keep ~20 bleeds on a target, epidemic in AoE fights, and the other party members will contribute a bleed here and there to keep mobs at 25.

Having 2 condition characters in a dungeon is like 4 manning it.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Lyndis.2584:

Out of all the classes, would you say ranger be the one you’d kick after the patch?

Then again, rangers were being kicked before patches, so I guess that’s a little redundant.

Will never kick any profession even rangers in any dungeon. However 2 is the absolute maximum I would ever take in every dungeon except COF p1. Sadly that is the same limit I would say for necros as well.

I did a 5 ranger run cof p1. Quite fun. Sure it wasnt SUPER FAST SPEED CLEAR. It wasnt slow either. Also, no wipes. 1-2 downs from slave driver. Dont think any during boss.

I think with the current COF standard, going down fighting slave driver = fail.

Anet won’t be happy until Rangers are completely extinct.

I love my Ranger, but if I’m doing dungeons I run my Warrior or my Guardian. Most people are nice and won’t kick someone for being a Ranger (neither will I,) but I still know I’m more of a burden then a boon so I just one of my other characters.

I still like playing my Ranger, but clearly Anet doesn’t want them in dungeons or doing anything other then running around solo in PVE. Easier to just do what they want and play a different class in Dungeons.

And yes, Ranger is by far the weakest Profession. Despite this fact, they continue to get nerfed in every patch. Honestly, if a dungeon group kicked me for being a Ranger, I wouldn’t even blame them. I just prefer to have the courtesy to not put people in that position to begin with. For Dungeons I’ll just use one of the ‘Anet approved classes for Dungeons.’ They have made it quite clear they don’t want anyone but Warriors, Guardians or Mesmers in Dungeons. Elementalist is still viable for now but I’m sure they’ll nerf them out next.

Well, seeing as I’ve been kicked 4 times today before I can even character switch off my ranger or enter the instance, it’s looking like ranger is becoming a tad more extinct than usual.

Even the build I was using which made them just borderline acceptable in dungeons is in tatters, so I really cannot blame pugs for kicking now.

Getin’ real tired of yo kitten A-Net.

Well Healing Seed Pods have been disabled, so you’ve got the edge there!

/pat

I highly regret maxing and gearing my Ranger.

I wouldn’t say they are useless, but of all my characters than run dungeons (warrior, guardian, elementalist, mesmer, to a lesser extent engineer) they are the only ones that I relied on quickness for my DPS. My ranger’s DPS in almost full glass cannon gear was already considerably lower than a warrior, marginally higher than my staff ele but I don’t throw out heals, combo fields, blast finishers and three different AoE CC skills on my weapon to compensate for the DPS difference (two weapons + two pets =/= the power level, utility and usefulness of four attunements). I also couldn’t compete with their AoE efficiency (proper positioning with piercing arrows isn’t as reliable as elementalist AoEs). My warrior, guardians, elementalist and engineer builds remain unchanged (and the first three were already performing much better than the ranger build I’d settled on after playing the class since the first BWE) but my ranger build was crippled by the quickness nerf (I relied on it for my ranger, none of the other classes needed it except for the mesmer). Mesmers still have Portal and Time War kitten till decent, rangers weren’t given anything game changing and they took another DPS hit they didn’t need.

I’m finding it harder to justify my ranger’s position in the group (I used to use pet swap quickness to res downed allies – the frequency it was up was great for situations like that, especially if you combined it with Search and Rescue), but I haven’t acquired my new armour set (the recent quickness nerf seriously crippled my build so I need to buy new armour to try out a great sword build, sucks even more now thanks to ascended).

I’ve been doing some 3-Ranger groups in Arah with a few guildies just for fun, and it’s pretty noticeable DPS wise. If you use a Sword, you can’t interrupt the attack chain to dodge so you are more prone to going down. If you use a Short Bow, you don’t really do any damage. Pets die at every boss, and it’s pretty hard to deal with Lupicus in phase 3 because he loves to bubble pets (even if they are dead), and you usually get caught inside with them. I can pull off 3k+ autoattacks on my Ranger with Sword if there are Warriors or Guardians in the group, but if there aren’t, there goes my damage. I enjoy playing my Ranger on occasion because I simply get bored of my Warrior, Guardian, and Mesmer, but they really don’t offer much in dungeon runs and are really just a hazard (piercing arrows aggroing every mob in the room, forgetting to set pet to defend, bouncing axes etc).

One other thing is that each person in my guild with a Ranger has a pretty good grasp on playing it, and there are a lot of pugs out there that sit back and max range bosses with a Long Bow. These are the people that I won’t tolerate in a group, because they already contribute so little just by bringing a Ranger and their low skill level only makes it worse.

bcd.4352:

Any condition class really, you only need one. A good condition necro can keep ~20 bleeds on a target, epidemic in AoE fights, and the other party members will contribute a bleed here and there to keep mobs at 25.

Having 2 condition characters in a dungeon is like 4 manning it.

The second Necro can go power/ wells/ boon removal. It is surprisingly effective in some situations but DPS wise is 4 and 1/2 man.

I would also not be able to stomach a 2 Necro 2 Ranger in the same party. 2 Necro + 1 Ranger would be stretching my tolerance level.

I usually wait for someone else to initiate the kick, then I greedily authorize it
Sometimes before anyone else notices it… just hovering there… mmmm..
My first roll was a ranger, and my first delete, too.

Farming high level fractals, CoE, Arah, and the cookie cutter dungeons as well with 2-3 rangers without any problem. It’s a matter of learning to play.

high level fractals with 3 rangers has to be a pain. Maw would go down so slowly because there’s only a 5/8 chance somebody who can damage maw will get targeted.

That’s why I like playing on my mesmer. I can summon clones to help take the aggro off the team if we’re low on crystals or keep them shattered if we have plenty.

I dread getting a ranger in my group when I decide to pug it. I would never kick someone for it but yeah. On average they just suck so bad. Necros and Engineers are perfectly fine.

Necro / Ranger / Engi / Ele are not really optimal to speed clears, but for a “fun” dungeon run, I don’t have a problem with any of them. I don’t have a huge problem with Thieves, but a bad Thief will do a great job of ruining a run.

Lyndis.2584:

Out of all the classes, would you say ranger be the one you’d kick after the patch?

Then again, rangers were being kicked before patches, so I guess that’s a little redundant.

Never saw a Ranger kicked from a group before. I’ve never seen anybody kicked from a group due to there profession.

I’d take a good Ranger over a poorly played Necro.

Also its not so much that Rangers are that bad. Its more that Warriors are just way too good compared to everything else.

I always ready “Hello, can switch to war or guard if needed” in my party chat when i invite myself into groups now, to not get instakicked before i can say a word.

Guess how many times i get “no its cool, we can use a ranger” as answer?

Not sure about this but i know warrior by far excels in dps/survivability/healing and beat rangers in ranged damage with rifle(kill shot).

Hm. Want the perspective of someone who used to have a level 80 ranger il full exotic and deleted it?
I deleted it because I realized I wasn’t using it.
And why wasn’t I using it? It wasn’t a matter of personal tastes, no: just the immense rift in effectiveness and usefulness that separated the ranger from my other lvl 80 classes (warrior, guardian, mesmer, ele and thief to a lesser extent).
After seeing by myself how supremely useless an average ranger can be in a dungeon, I decided to level one to see if it was only a so-called l2play issue: is the ranger, if played by a decent°° gamer, still beastly as a warrior or guardian?
My answer? No.
I studied its traits, came to the conclusion there are so few support options that even the thief in comparison is a guardian, so decided to focus on dps traits and gear, while trying to be supportive with my skills. The spirits need a complete rework because they’re kitten terrible, and the beastmastery tree is overall laughable.
I found some interesting combos with the few decent utilities at the ranger’s disposal: quickening zephyr, “Guard”, “Search and rescue”, the stone sigil. Traps… meh.
The pet… well. The AI is pitiful, and a big part of the damage comes from pets: if you have a feline with you, they hit pretty kitten hard (3-6k). A moa can give 15s fury to the team, a jaguar can give might, good. And when they die, 20 secs after you activated them, 1/4 of your damage goes with them.
A buffed dps guardian can whirl around for over 8k while keeping boons on the whole team, the ranger can reach 11-12k with rapid fire, but then? What? a 15s fury, might and swiftness with the horn? Eh, a guardian can keep perma-might and swiftness on the whole team, so does the warrior. Combo finishers? Where? Combo fields? One decent. The heal. And I was the only ranger I’ve ever seen that actually used it under the melees’ feet.
I deleted it because I didn’t die, I played properly, I supported and ressed, I kept my pet alive when possible, I made it work, but even then it worked kitten bad. I felt wasted using that class when I could keep an entire team up with my guardian.
It doesn’t need a buff, it needs an overhaul in PvE, like the one to the dervish class in GW1.
But yeah, it can work. In the hands of the average CoF puggie, though… Meh. Useless.

°° No, I’m not some kind of uberpro or min-maxer. I have experience simply by playing a lot with all classes. No need to be a genius or something.

When a developer stated that the ranger is so OP in open world PvE, and the proof is all bots used ranger as a gathering toon, you know what the ranger is used for.

U guys keep talking bout rangers sucks and such, but at least say out y it sucks and how it sucks!!

Rachel.1249:

U guys keep talking bout rangers sucks and such, but at least say out y it sucks and how it sucks!!

Very poor group utility, sub-par damage.
Done.

Rachel.1249:

U guys keep talking bout rangers sucks and such, but at least say out y it sucks and how it sucks!!

At the risk of feeding a troll, I’ll go ahead and say it anyways:

Can you read?

Rachel.1249:

U guys keep talking bout rangers sucks and such, but at least say out y it sucks and how it sucks!!

Because you have to be an absolute class master to be even moderately effective in any environment. Master of no trade, mediocre of all.

That 15 second water spring is something I love in my parties, since i can spam blast finishers it really helps keep the party alive.

I’ve never had any issues with any class in the party. All are welcome. The main issue is when someone was failing to bring a specific condition, also jade maw was a pain with 3 rangers due to the reflect :p

emikochan.8504:

That 15 second water spring is something I love in my parties, since i can spam blast finishers it really helps keep the party alive.

I’ve never had any issues with any class in the party. All are welcome. The main issue is when someone was failing to bring a specific condition, also jade maw was a pain with 3 rangers due to the reflect :p

I disagree with ArenaNet’s current stance on pet’s being targetable by the Jade Maw. The value of the current design is the possibility the pet could be targeted while the party is under pressure thus saving someone from being targeted by the maw while the party tries to res people or acquire more crystals. I personally think this is a bad decision because it’s yet another thing ranger’s have no control over. You can’t decide to have your pet targeted, so you can’t intentionally help your party using it, it doesn’t reward a decision you make or an action you take, if it does reward you, it rewards you for being a ranger and having a pet that got targeted by random chance. It’s an RNG benefit and most of the time, it’s the RNG you don’t want to win. When you don’t want it to happen, it wastes your party’s time, it often kills your pet (assuming your pet is alive) and there is no tool to prevent it aside from pet swap (which could be on cool down).

Having said all that, when I used to run FotM I used to spend this fight refreshing crystals so they didn’t despawn and stayed out of combat so I could stow my pet and avoid having it targeted. The other four people were more than enough to kill the mobs while I ran around (bored) picking up and dropping the crystals. So there is a way to avoid the pet issue in Jade Maw, it’s just very boring and I personally don’t think it should even be an issue.

Another reason why rangers struggle in dungeons is because encounters which have mechanics which target every player will also target the pet. Firstly this is unfair because quite often the pet will simply die. While it’s possible to dodge these moves on a character (often via evade, not just getting outside of an AoE) a pet will usually eat it and die. Another reason it’s unfair is because when fighting a boss like the Nightmare Tree in TA, if you fail to dodge the egg sacks he drops at the end of F/U path, you will be hit by both your egg sack and the egg sack targeting your pet (assuming you have your pet at your side to avoid aggroing spiders and thus lowering your DPS during this encounter).

It’s really depressing to see the ranger hate on reddit and these forums reach the level it’s currently at (I’ve been critical of much of the difficulties of the class but until the quickness nerf I thought they had acceptable DPS despite not having good support options outside of their water field) and know that even if the Hayley’s Commit of game balance comes around in the very next balance patch and rangers get the buff they’ve needed for so long, it’s almost a full month away. And that’s assuming they actually buff rangers next time (or give them the buffs they need – a DPS buff and a rework of their support options).

Gotta be honest, had a love/hate relationship with my ranger in dungeons. The QZ nerf was the final straw after finding an acceptable DPS build. I got my warrior to 80 last night, decked it in full exo and let me tell you, the grass really is a hell of alot greener on the other side. Way more damage and alot more group utility.. and I dont even need to run glass. It’s boring to play, nowhere near as fun as the ranger, but it just does so much more for the group that it would be selfish for me to bring ranger.

The utility of the ranger was poor and the only way to account for it was through providing a steady amount of burst DPS via LB/SB glass quickness and spamming heal spring on the party. This has now been undermined, resulting in the DPS now not enough to make up for that poor utility in dungeons.

Perhaps we will see this improved, perhaps not. But for now, when it comes to high end fractals, my ranger is shelved, and I don’t blame anyone for kicking them. Especially given the vast majority of rangers I have seen think it’s a good idea to run bunker bullkitten or shortbow 1 spam in the back and do kitten all, with thier dead bear pet beside them. They don’t even know that muddy terrain and entangle exist. Just a waste of a group space at that point.

One does hope they get an improvement ( if only a PVE one ). Ranger is still acceptable at least, in sPvP.

Rangers can’t be useless. They are very very usefull to kitten up runs. Or better said their pet is.

Ran… ger? Whats that?

“You can’t spell Ranger without ANGER!!”

Lol but seriously, I am a ranger at heart and I can honestly say they can hold up by themselves a lot, they can carry teams in dungeons (I know because I have done it myself), they condition, spike and combo field as well as other classes and while they may not have constant buffs like the guardian or dps like an ele they do bring a lot to the table when used effectively. Sadly there are a lot of bad rangers… no wait, players, out there. You see them with their berserk warriors in CoF wiping constantly on the slave driver, you see them on their guardians in AC getting constantly downed by spike traps or flame jets. It is not the class, it is the player. Some players are better with certain classes, their just seems to be a lack of interest in learning how to play a ranger correctly. Guardians, any monkey can run these but it takes skill to use them correctly – Mesmer, one of the most popular but I suck tremendously with mine and that does not mean the class is bugged/broken.

“Are Rangers the most useless?” Nope, not by a longbow… eh longshot.

They are however unpopular, like the AV kids in your high school, they have their uses but nobody wants to socialize with them.

pft; id never kick (or refuse access to a party) by class alone

Even a good player can’t work miracles. Problem with rangers is their subpar dps via pets who have tons of issues I won’t even go into, the fact that pretty much any other class can do higher ranged dps, any melee class can do higher melee dps, and pretty much a lack of worthwhile utility except healing spring. I mean sure you can do pretty much any dungeon with a ranger but you sure in hell will know it will take longer to do and if you add 2 or more rangers, might as well block out a big chunk of time to finish a dungeon.

On that note, I wouldn’t kick one for being a ranger but I would for being a bad player. I just don’t get excited when I group with one and I actually sigh alittle if I get 2 in a group.

JJBigs.8456:

Khal Drogo.9631:

Lyndis.2584:

Out of all the classes, would you say ranger be the one you’d kick after the patch?

Then again, rangers were being kicked before patches, so I guess that’s a little redundant.

Will never kick any profession even rangers in any dungeon. However 2 is the absolute maximum I would ever take in every dungeon except COF p1. Sadly that is the same limit I would say for necros as well.

I did a 5 ranger run cof p1. Quite fun. Sure it wasnt SUPER FAST SPEED CLEAR. It wasnt slow either. Also, no wipes. 1-2 downs from slave driver. Dont think any during boss.

Using the easiest dungeon in the game as your baseline is a bit misleading.

I play a lv80 ranger as my main, full exo and accended gear, and I agree that we are more burdens in a party then not. Running lv20+ fractals with her I can’t contribute the same as the other party members, even though I don’t die (or die last) and try to coordinate with what is needed.

Truth is, rangers need a full reworking to be viable.

Here’s something else I wanna say in regards to rangers:

If you are going to run the most kitten class in a dungeon. At LEAST have the decency to put full exotic gear on it… and play it correctly. I am SO tried of this.

Honestly, yes. Rangers in particular are awful for dungeons, but when geared correctly and played skillfully they can at least be somewhat acceptable. ( as in not an entire waste of kitten space) How many pugs do that though? That’s the issue.

Everytime one joins it’s just ‘Oh god no, not another ranger, may as well be an empty party slot.’

Watching a ranger sit in the back doing kitten all in a full set of green gear in a level EIGHTY dungeon really grinds my gears.

On that note I also want to say that I had a guardian the other day in COE with blue gear (after I asked for geared only) and a bloody mistfire wolf, I wanted to rip his kitten head off at the end, the run took forever because he kept dieing.

/ragerant over.

TL:DR- Put proper kittening gear on your kittenty ranger if you insist on burdening your team with it. Put proper gear on all your classes, but make kitten sure it’s on your ranger if that’s what you’re gonna play.