Ranger in Dungeons?

Ranger in Dungeons?

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Posted by: Oolune.4357

Oolune.4357

I keep seeing people in various places refer to Ranger as the worst class for dungeons. Is this the case, or is this just another of those issues where the popular commentary is misguided?

I have never seemed to have an issue in dungeons. Pet management isn’t hard, and my damage output with Longbow/Shortbow plus the utility I bring to the group has always been a point of enjoyment for past groups I took part in. However, this was admittedly months ago. Coming back to the game now, I see all this negative talk about Ranger and it worries me, not because I care if it is a little more difficult to get a group but because I am legitimately worried that, in the current state of the game, I may not be able to actually bring something to the table for my guild/party as a Ranger.

Does anyone have any (well-thought-out and not emotionally-charged) thoughts in regards to this? What are the reasons behind some people disregarding Ranger as a desirable profession, and are they well-founded? I would love to hear from and intelligent, literate person who feels this way, thus why I posted it in the Dungeon forums rather than the Ranger-specific forums.

Tarnished Coast
Oolune :: Engineer — Arrow Of Oolune :: Human Ranger -- Shadow Of Oolune :: Human Thief
Box The Turtle :: Human Warrior — Bolobuns Of Steel :: Human Guardian

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Posted by: Croatoan.8426

Croatoan.8426

Reason behind it is they would rather carry a mesmer,warrior,or a guardian. The people you are referring to are elitist and I would take there word with a grain of salt. I run with rangers and engineers (which are in the same talk) and it is only speed run groups and elitist that won’t take you.

Entire fort of people disapeared,only thing left carved into a tree was CROATOAN.

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Posted by: Sir Vincent III.1286

Sir Vincent III.1286

I only run dungeons with my Ranger since it is the profession that has wide range of party support since they are not limited to their own skills but they also have access to their pet skills.

But not everyone can manage their pets properly, thus the reputation.

http://sirvincentiii.com ~ In the beginning…there was Tarnished Coast…
Full set of 5 unique skills for both dual-wield weapon sets: P/P and D/D – Make it happen
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Posted by: Shiren.9532

Shiren.9532

Personally I think you’ve started with a a misguided focus. It’s not my current experience that the general feeling or opinion on rangers is that they are the worst class in dungeons. I do not believe this is the dominant opinion, the stigma of a bad class in dungeons is generally passed around from the less efficient ones (necromancers, engineers, thieves, rangers, elementalists). Of course some classes have a higher skill cap build which performs well in dungeons (like a DPS thief replacing warriors) but the general approach to classes in dungeons is usually based on the low to average skill cap builds and how they perform (one of the primary reasons warriors are so popular – even baddies can perform well on them). So to begin with, I believe it’s false to say that generally people think rangers are the worst class in dungeons, some people might, but the wider community hasn’t deemed them as such yet (I suspect baddie thieves or engineers will take that prize before rangers ever do).

The concept of managing your pets properly is a very broad one and could be mean any number of different things. A discussion like this one would benefit more from a more detailed explanation of what you mean by that rather than a general statement which means very little. I don’t care how much you manage your pet, I don’t believe their current design allows for them to be alive regardless of how much you micro, so even “proper management” isn’t enough to account for their flaws.

Which brings me to the bigger issue. Rangers are in a unique position in GW2. A significant amount of their DPS is contributed by the pet, for balance reasons this means rangers do less damage with their own skills to account for pet DPS. When the pet is dead (no other class has a mandatory situation where a huge chunk of their DPS can be taken away because of bad AI, optional builds which do such as turrets and minions are less popular in harder content) the class does below average DPS. Because of the way dungeons were designed (hard hitting mobs which are intended to challenge player positioning and punish static combat and players who don’t dodge) pets will frequently be cowering. Dungeons were designed to require players to dodge and use proper positioning, pets were not designed to dodge or use proper position and they were given nothing (such as an AoE resistance) to make up for their flawed programming. This is a real problem facing the ranger and is the source of a lot of discontent within the players of the class and to a lesser extent, a criticism of the class from outside. The higher the performance requirements of the game, the less viable the AI is. It’s already unsatisfactory for basic dungeon combat, when pushed to do high level FotM or harder dungeon encounters, the pet mechanic will continue to limit the class. It’s a design problem the developers need to solve.

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Posted by: Shiren.9532

Shiren.9532

In addition to that, rangers have very few incredible skills to contribute to a group that dungeon design favours. Group stability or aegis from guardian shouts are great for situations like the harpies in FotM, the mesmer portal skill flat out breaks certain encounters such as the swamp fractal, the incredible value and popularity of Ash Legion Spy Kits shows how valuable thief stealth can be, Feedback and Wall of Reflection are some of the best skills in the game. Rangers don’t have many of these powerful and useful tools. More than most (if not all classes) ranger utility skills are pretty awful. They lack build diversity, they don’t have encounter changing effects the party will love (like Portal or Feedback) they don’t even have a spam and forget shout build like warriors and guardians (which can not only provide shout benefits, but they also remove conditions when traited or given runes). Support rangers are almost non-existent (spirits are terrible, shouts are shallow and pet dependant and most of the other skills solely effect the ranger and/or its pet). Aside from Search and Rescue (a reactive and very buggy skill), Healing Spring (one of the best support skills in the game and the only saving grace the ranger has) and Spirit of Nature (good but not great) rangers have very little support to offer a party.

Their DPS is great (worse when the pet is dead – which is often) even if it’s not on par with a warrior and their control is also near the top of all classes (it comes at heavy investment – Entangle, Barrage, Muddy Terrain, Frost Trap, Spike Trap – elementalists can reach similar levels of control with their staff alone) but their support is terrible, and when you consider a single Feedback can prevent more deaths than Search and Rescue, without anyone getting downed, with a shorter cooldown and it does DPS, it’s easy to see how the ranger would be less preferred in parties.

When you don’t have the best DPS, the best utility or the best support skills, you won’t be taken over those people. When you need a higher skill cap build to compete with a low skill cap build, the general performance of rangers will be lower than one hundred blades warriors. To answer your question, look at what the class can do and compare it to what other classes can do (and what is needed for successful and efficient dungeon runs).

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Posted by: DeadlySynz.3471

DeadlySynz.3471

I think the reason people are saying this is because the pet generally makes up close to 50% of the dps. The pets die easily apparently in dungeons, so there goes half of your dps. Or your either pulling them in and out of combat.. again, your pulling half of your dps out of combat sometimes.

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Posted by: PetricaKerempuh.7958

PetricaKerempuh.7958

if u run coe with ranger you will be bringing a lot to the pt, but nothing good unfortunately.

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Posted by: Direngrey.8376

Direngrey.8376

Reason behind it is they would rather carry a mesmer,warrior,or a guardian. The people you are referring to are elitist and I would take there word with a grain of salt. I run with rangers and engineers (which are in the same talk) and it is only speed run groups and elitist that won’t take you.

We are far from being elitists, rangers do no damage and their pets aggro monsters when we are trying to get in position. Only thing rangers are good at is wvw. I ADMIT, we had a ranger in fractals who saved our behinds because his pet revived him and he revived us. However this only happened once, all other rangers were fail. If you’re going to run a dungeon you want it fast while gaining the game experience, and clean.

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Posted by: Gelltor.3015

Gelltor.3015

Generally the people who will exclude rangers from parties are not the people you want to play with anyway,I normally avoid any group that excludes certain professions for that reason.
Also,this forum will happily tell you all the ranger’s faults but most people in the game tend not to care/even know about alot of the less obvious problems people have with them.

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Posted by: SkyChef.5432

SkyChef.5432

Generally the people who will exclude rangers from parties are not the people you want to play with anyway,I normally avoid any group that excludes certain professions for that reason.
Also,this forum will happily tell you all the ranger’s faults but most people in the game tend not to care/even know about alot of the less obvious problems people have with them.

False. I accept them because I’m a nice person,not that I don’t know 80-90% of rangers out there are horrible in dungeons. Every time I see 2 rangers in CoF p2/p3, CoE, Arah, I’ve said to myself “here we go again”. You know how many times, I just want to have some good excuses to quit the party when those rangers standing there short bowing & die, time after time.

What Shiren said is the main reason, I rarely bring my ranger in a dungeon, unless in a friendly party that they know I’m trying to test my ranger skills.

People are too serious of their knowledge.

(edited by SkyChef.5432)

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Posted by: Sir Vincent III.1286

Sir Vincent III.1286

I think the reason people are saying this is because the pet generally makes up close to 50% of the dps. The pets die easily apparently in dungeons, so there goes half of your dps. Or your either pulling them in and out of combat.. again, your pulling half of your dps out of combat sometimes.

If the Ranger build beastmaster then that might be true, but that is just poor Ranger build. Marksmanship + shortbow gets the DPS job done with dead or alive pet.

I personally only use my pet as utility skill. Take the Fernhound for example, I sends him in to pounce my taget for KD then pull him back. Since I’m not spec BM, his DPS is not necessary. My pet is always in passive and I put him away when we’re not in combat to avoid unnecessary aggro.

I think that players just need to play the professions more and in time learn from mistakes, otherwise they will never know how to play a Ranger.

http://sirvincentiii.com ~ In the beginning…there was Tarnished Coast…
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Posted by: Dahkeus.8243

Dahkeus.8243

There’s two sides to this argument:

Side 1 claims that rangers are useless regardless of player skill.

Side 2 claim that rangers are fine if you just L2P.

The reality is this:
- You can clear any dungeon content in GW2 with a ranger
- However, you will clear any dugneon content more efficiently using a mesmer, warrior, or even guardian.

I’ve played a ranger since beta, but I’m rerolling to mesmer now. This isn’t because I hit some sort of glass wall playing a ranger, but because I can do equal to greater damage on a mesmer while providing utility that matters (time warp, feedback, portals, etc.).

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Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

It’s quite simple. Pets die quickly in difficult dungeon encounters. Tough dungeon encounters need repeated dodges, blocks, or evades and pets will not do any of that. Through a failure of design, pets are decimated by agony in fractals. Until pets can provide their contribution in dungeons rangers will always under perform.

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Posted by: Mad Queen Malafide.7512

Mad Queen Malafide.7512

I would never exclude a ranger from my group. But that pet revive is buggy as hell. It never works when you need it. The pet would just be standing there, picking its nose.

“Madness is just another way to view reality”
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-On3Ya0_4Y)

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Posted by: Aegis.9724

Aegis.9724

FACTS:
-Rangers have poor to no utility (Healing spring, pet rez on 90s cd and a decent buff on warhorn)

-Half of the ranger damage is from the pet. The pet gains no stats from your equip, and many dungeon encounters in gw2 are based on you dodging at the right time, or get oneshotted. Recalling the pet does not always work because its slow, and many of those aoe are not radial. Also, even when succesfully microing, half the time your pet is not hitting anything, halving your dps.

-Ranger dps is good WITH the pet hitting, and pets only hit a single target.

-Many traits in beastmastery work against the class concept, forcing you to swap when not needed to get a secondary effect or not swap at all. Traits are a mess in general (enjoy that forced precision and crit damage bonuses on a trapper build)

-In many dungeons, pets MUST be kept on peaceful, hence halving your dps. Often, even that is not enough (arah p4 pets aggro wisps even on peaceful, fractals agony oneshots pets)

-Most of the pve content is easy enough that people dont really care about all of this, taking a few more minutes per run is no big deal. But on hard content (or speedruns, where efficency is king) yes, rangers are underdogs in pugging, along with engineers (which still have better support and can spec nades if need be)

(edited by Aegis.9724)

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Posted by: abelooi.9156

abelooi.9156

The reality is this:
- You can clear any dungeon content in GW2 with a ranger
- However, you will clear any dugneon content more efficiently using a mesmer, warrior, or even guardian.

^THIS. Just THIS. Tqvm. I only party with rangers if they are friends or guildies and it’s just a casual fun run where all builds are on because nobody is in a hurry. If it’s farm or speedrun however, even guildies and friends with rangers and engineers will not be entertained.

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Posted by: swiftpaw.6397

swiftpaw.6397

it’s acceptable if you are a skilled player.

For my ranger in dungeons I run full glass cannon with Longbow/shortbow, quickness on pet swap. I also take muddy terrain and Entangle for some excellent CC in places like fractals shaman boss and charr fractals charging warriors.

Grandmaster Forum Mind Brain
|-Swiftpaw Sharpclaw [DnT]-|

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Posted by: Shakki.3219

Shakki.3219

i hardly accept rangers except i know them (thats 2) else no rangers in my parties…

why? because EVERY time i tried i had the typical rangers… stay as far as you can and go braindead afk with normal hits.

no wonder nobody wants them

Reaper – AnguĂ®sh

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Posted by: swiftpaw.6397

swiftpaw.6397

i hardly accept rangers except i know them (thats 2) else no rangers in my parties…

why? because EVERY time i tried i had the typical rangers… stay as far as you can and go braindead afk with normal hits.

no wonder nobody wants them

Gotta quote this for truth. Sadly the playerbase gives this class an awful reputation and I am the same, alot of the time if I have a bad hunch I’ll kick them. A gear check and checking achieve points can help filter out alot of the bads, but it still shocks me, the amount of rangers with 5k+ achieves who cannot play the class. I assume they are alts :/

I am tired of the same old.. ranger with his shortbow spamming 1 right in the back with his dead pet bear beside him.

Grandmaster Forum Mind Brain
|-Swiftpaw Sharpclaw [DnT]-|

(edited by swiftpaw.6397)

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Posted by: azureai.9764

azureai.9764

A good Ranger can be incredibly effective in dungeons. (I’ve certainly known a few that will save my Guardian bacon on occassion.) But I can understand how a player that doesn’t manage their pet well will hinder a dungeon run. Even a pro Ranger, because the AI on pets isn’t great, will on occassion have a pet “be bad” and go aggro a random Champ because…who knows. On the plus side, the pets can end up being great sacrificial lambs and targets of things you would never want a player to be effected by: unavoidable stonetouches, crystal prisons, ect. That can spare other players (and the Ranger) time to DPS away.

The poor pet AI aside, however, any player that doesn’t know the mechanics of his/her class or the game is going to be a hinderence to the party.

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Posted by: Trollhammer.7439

Trollhammer.7439

I came to similar conclusion as many people here after playing ranger at 80. Ranger is just bad in end game content. They have poor support, and have to work twice as hard to just deal damage, which comes naturally for other classes. Pets are a dead horse. No point in beating it further.
I watched the recent dev interview and does not look promising either. So if you wanna run end game content – do yourself a favor and reroll.

it’s acceptable if you are a skilled player.

For my ranger in dungeons I run full glass cannon with Longbow/shortbow, quickness on pet swap. I also take muddy terrain and Entangle for some excellent CC in places like fractals shaman boss and charr fractals charging warriors.

Please do not ever use longbow. You are willingly making yourself a waste of a party slot. Use Axe/Warhorn for your second set. At least you can throw some buffs and bleeds on swap instead of just doing horrid DPS that nobody will even notice if it is gone.

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Posted by: Myth Shaia.4856

Myth Shaia.4856

it’s acceptable if you are a skilled player.

For my ranger in dungeons I run full glass cannon with Longbow/shortbow, quickness on pet swap. I also take muddy terrain and Entangle for some excellent CC in places like fractals shaman boss and charr fractals charging warriors.

This is true and holds true for every other profession out there. I run FoTMs 26/28 with 2 rangers in my party. Haven’t had a problem really. We do have a PPT Warrior and PPT Guardian and usually the 5th is a PUG and we don’t particularly care what class it is, we work around it and get the job done. Simple enough.

It’s just a shame that rangers & engineers seem to carry this terrible stigma, neccies and eles to a lesser extent (I think…)

…from elsewhere…
“I am not a complete idiot, there are some components missing still!” …

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Posted by: Trollhammer.7439

Trollhammer.7439

This is true and holds true for every other profession out there. I run FoTMs 26/28 with 2 rangers in my party. Haven’t had a problem really. We do have a PPT Warrior and PPT Guardian and usually the 5th is a PUG and we don’t particularly care what class it is, we work around it and get the job done. Simple enough.

Compare apples to apples please. Is skilled ranger player better than a random warrior PUG? Yeah, so what? Skilled warrior player will be even better.

It’s just a shame that rangers & engineers seem to carry this terrible stigma, neccies and eles to a lesser extent (I think…)

People don’t come up with a class to hate on just for the sake of hating. Rangers are bad – that is just the reality, and the hate reflects that quite well.

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Posted by: Zoef.2761

Zoef.2761

I read a lot of crap here about rangers. When pet is down u lose half of your DPS. Not my ranger. Just finished Arah p.1-2-3. Spent quite some time rezzing guardian and necro. It’s all about knowing how to play your character. Noobs that dont know anything about playing rangers pretend that they are experts on rangers while they barely manage to hold their own class. Big mouths, small brains. I keep away from these people when running dungeons.
Trollhammer, the reality is that u dont have any idea what you’re talking about and you’re too narrowminded to even realize it.

(edited by Zoef.2761)

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Posted by: Renegade.6325

Renegade.6325

To Zoef, this argument is about skilled players, not bad ones. Bad players playing badly is an inevitability, not evidence.

The whole point is that when you have 5 good players, there is no serious reason to bring a ranger for one of those 5 positions. Guard War Mesmer all fill the important roles much better, and rangers simply cannot compete in terms of utility, damage and support.

" Spent quite some time rezzing guardian and necro." Then they should learn to play better. Not swap to ranger.

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Posted by: Leo G.4501

Leo G.4501

People don’t come up with a class to hate on just for the sake of hating. Rangers are bad – that is just the reality, and the hate reflects that quite well.

You’d be wrong. By the way you describe them, a ranger will get your party killed by just being there. IMO, alot of the talk giving about Ranger is the fact that they aren’t optimal but that’s far and away from being a detriment.

I’ve been keeping my eye on Ranger lately, both in groups and on the forums. I’m interested in rolling one if only to see just how ‘bad’ it is. But I’m waiting a bit longer in hopes there will be an update soon that introduces a new race as I have my heart set on making a Tengu Ranger…but I’ll settle for whatever new race crops up.

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Posted by: Vox Hollow.2736

Vox Hollow.2736

People don’t come up with a class to hate on just for the sake of hating

Hahahaha. Ahh~

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Posted by: Zoef.2761

Zoef.2761

To Renegade. There’s no ranger that can compete with warrior when it comes to damage. But rangers are very good at support. Warrior can only deal DPS if there are others that heal them when they’re down for x time.
When it comes to support, ranger is among the better. Each of the classes u mention can do one specific task better than ranger, ranger can do all three of them at the same time but at a lower level.
Rangers are generalists not specialists. The keyword is versability.
If u want a team that only consists out of specialists, be my guest but dont claim that a class that can do one specific task better than ranger is therefore a better class. Ranger can do all three of them at the same time.
I have a problem with people that dont know how to play ranger and then conclude the class sucks. It is them that suck at playing ranger. If u expect ranger to deal out as much DPS as warrior u dont know what you’re talking about.

(edited by Zoef.2761)

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Posted by: Trollhammer.7439

Trollhammer.7439

You’d be wrong. By the way you describe them, a ranger will get your party killed by just being there. IMO, alot of the talk giving about Ranger is the fact that they aren’t optimal but that’s far and away from being a detriment.

You deal in relative terms but fail to grasp the irony of it. Being suboptimal is a detriment.

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Posted by: Renegade.6325

Renegade.6325

“Rangers are generalists not specialists. The keyword is versability.”

Ignoring the irony: sure. Rangers do a bunch of stuff. Warriors have a singular task. Out of balance, warriors are really really good at that 1 thing, and rangers have to be mediocre at all their things.

The key really is that teams should be stripping away as much defence away as they can afford to, in return increasing their damage. Content is so super easy that you can rukittenerker warriors who rarely need to even dodge, because the mesmer will boost DPS to a point where you kill a boss before he can kill you.

And for content that is ever so slightly more difficult, where you need that extra versatility/support, you bring a guardian. Aegis, protection, wards are far superior to anything a ranger can do. Sure you will be doing more damage than that guardian possibly, but that wasnt the reason you dropped 1 warrior. Teams werent craving versatility. They werent asking for a bear or a dog. They didnt want some ranged profession fighting away from the team.

You say rangers are very good at support. I am not convinced. A water field, a non significant amount of interupts, some lame conditions simply arent good enough. This is why they arent brought along.

The ranger isnt better than a warrior for dps, and not better than guard for support. And it does not sit happily in the middle doing a nice mixture of both, it simply fails to meet the standards of the other professions.

Am I wrong? Do rangers support well? What do they do to stop a warrior from going down.

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Posted by: Leo G.4501

Leo G.4501

You’d be wrong. By the way you describe them, a ranger will get your party killed by just being there. IMO, alot of the talk giving about Ranger is the fact that they aren’t optimal but that’s far and away from being a detriment.

You deal in relative terms but fail to grasp the irony of it. Being suboptimal is a detriment.

Noun
1. The state of being harmed or damaged.
2. A cause of harm or damage.

Being suboptimal isn’t taking the HP out of your health orb nor putting more power in the hands of the enemy.

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Posted by: Trollhammer.7439

Trollhammer.7439

You’d be wrong. By the way you describe them, a ranger will get your party killed by just being there. IMO, alot of the talk giving about Ranger is the fact that they aren’t optimal but that’s far and away from being a detriment.

You deal in relative terms but fail to grasp the irony of it. Being suboptimal is a detriment.

Noun
1. The state of being harmed or damaged.
2. A cause of harm or damage.

Being suboptimal isn’t taking the HP out of your health orb nor putting more power in the hands of the enemy.

It is if you consider 5 optimal classes as a baseline.

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Posted by: Leo G.4501

Leo G.4501

You’d be wrong. By the way you describe them, a ranger will get your party killed by just being there. IMO, alot of the talk giving about Ranger is the fact that they aren’t optimal but that’s far and away from being a detriment.

You deal in relative terms but fail to grasp the irony of it. Being suboptimal is a detriment.

Noun
1. The state of being harmed or damaged.
2. A cause of harm or damage.

Being suboptimal isn’t taking the HP out of your health orb nor putting more power in the hands of the enemy.

It is if you consider 5 optimal classes as a baseline.

It is what? Taking HP out of your health orb?

I’d like to see you prove that.

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Posted by: Trollhammer.7439

Trollhammer.7439

You’d be wrong. By the way you describe them, a ranger will get your party killed by just being there. IMO, alot of the talk giving about Ranger is the fact that they aren’t optimal but that’s far and away from being a detriment.

You deal in relative terms but fail to grasp the irony of it. Being suboptimal is a detriment.

Noun
1. The state of being harmed or damaged.
2. A cause of harm or damage.

Being suboptimal isn’t taking the HP out of your health orb nor putting more power in the hands of the enemy.

It is if you consider 5 optimal classes as a baseline.

It is what? Taking HP out of your health orb?

I’d like to see you prove that.

Are you playing stupid? You have 5 optimal classes. You replace one with suboptimal class. Clearly your group efficiency is at loss.
Whats so hard to understand here? You had more damage and support and now you have less. More becoming less is not harm to you?

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Posted by: Trollhammer.7439

Trollhammer.7439

@Renegade.6325
Ranger doing more damage than a guardian? Maybe on a single target, but not by much. On trash mobs my support specced guardian does way more damage than my DPS specced ranger, simple because of cleave on every attack

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Posted by: Leo G.4501

Leo G.4501

You’d be wrong. By the way you describe them, a ranger will get your party killed by just being there. IMO, alot of the talk giving about Ranger is the fact that they aren’t optimal but that’s far and away from being a detriment.

You deal in relative terms but fail to grasp the irony of it. Being suboptimal is a detriment.

Noun
1. The state of being harmed or damaged.
2. A cause of harm or damage.

Being suboptimal isn’t taking the HP out of your health orb nor putting more power in the hands of the enemy.

It is if you consider 5 optimal classes as a baseline.

It is what? Taking HP out of your health orb?

I’d like to see you prove that.

Are you playing stupid? You have 5 optimal classes. You replace one with suboptimal class. Clearly your group efficiency is at loss.
Whats so hard to understand here? You had more damage and support and now you have less. More becoming less is not harm to you?

I believe you were the one that started taking words out of context to bend their meaning for irony’s sake.

But I couldn’t comment on relative effectiveness as I have no basis to ground the opinion on (me having no experience with the profession personally), but in absolute terms you wouldn’t be better off with a 4 member group without a ranger vs a 5 member group with a ranger.

Would you turn up with less if you substituted one of your 5 members with a ranger? I couldn’t say but I wouldn’t count on the community being right. The community is so often wrong, it’s not even funny.

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Posted by: HoboLyra.4908

HoboLyra.4908

I play a ranger as my main, and sadly I have to agree that most of the time rangers are not optimal for dungeons. Lets take Arah farming for example (I do a lot with our guild)
I can temp. stow my pet, but if even one attack hits me he comes out and agroes more.
I survive more better then most of my party members ankittenhe last one to go down normally, but once down my “lick wounds” only works 50% of the time making it a wasted cause unless fixed. Same with “search and rescue” to support the party.
My DPS is split, so I can only do half of my damage if an AOE eats my pet.
(DPS issue as well with Agony as my pet has no resistance)
My Support skills are lack luster and do little to help the party in comparison to other classes.

TL;DR version
Issue one: No perm. pet stashing
Issue two: Lick wounds / search and rescue only works 50% of time
Issue three: Dependant on pets that die easilly to agony and AoE
Issue four: Skillset is subpar for party support in comparison to other classes.

I love my ranger, she is my favorite character hands down for now- but I know she is a weakness in any optimal party for fractals/dungeons.

-Tarnished Coast-
Obsidian Spire OS / EXS

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Posted by: Trollhammer.7439

Trollhammer.7439

@Leo G.4501
It seems to me you just repeated what I said, but reworded to make it look like you are correcting me.
Do you or do you not have a point opposing to mine? Or you just grasping for words for the sake of continuing pointless argument?

Here is mine: Rangers are bad and you are better off bringing any other class.

Now lets hear yours.

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Posted by: Leo G.4501

Leo G.4501

@Leo G.4501
It seems to me you just repeated what I said, but reworded to make it look like you are correcting me.
Do you or do you not have a point opposing to mine? Or you just grasping for words for the sake of continuing pointless argument?

You want a ‘pointless argument’, then quote away.

I’m not agreeing with you, I’m saying I don’t know and I’m not taking forum posters word on the matter.

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Posted by: Zoef.2761

Zoef.2761

Renegade: Calling a class that can do three tasks simultaneously mediocre shows how biased u are. Like i said: a warrior deals more dps than ranger, guardian heals better, but none of them is able to combine both in a decent way. If that’s mediocre to u, so be it.
Blaming ranger for doing damage at range, which is one of the key characteristics of the class, is on the same level as blaming a warrior for doing damage at close range. Guess warriors are a bit envious at the ease ranger deals damage without taking any.
How do i support warriors? By healing the poor kittens lol.

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Posted by: Zoef.2761

Zoef.2761

To Trollhammer: “Rangers are bad….” You fail to grasp the difference between an opinion and an argument. Previous quote is not an argument, just your biased statement.

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Posted by: Trollhammer.7439

Trollhammer.7439

@Zoef.2761
How many complete dressed in exotics/ascended lvl80 toons do you have? Your point about warriors and guardians shows how utterly clueless you are about other classes.
Ranger DPS is bad. Not just worse than warrior’s, not even better than guardians, it is plain bad, no excuse.
Ranger healing? Whats that? The only thing that even remotely qualify is other people splashing of the Healing Spring. Ranger himself cannot do it. Guardian can heal way better, tank, DPS and provide other non-healing buffs (yes, in a single build). What does ranger do? Nothing noticeable to the party, thus the point: rangers are bad. It’s not my opinion, it’s a fact and only you haven’t accepted it yet.

@Leo G.4501
You don’t know and you don’t trust me. Fine, then go and try it, end of story.

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Posted by: Zoef.2761

Zoef.2761

Trollhammer: U are simply not capable of making the distinction between facts and your own narrowminded opinions. Calling your opinion a fact doesn’t make it a fact. It just shows how shallow your reasoning is and how weak your arguments. That’s the reason you call your opinions “reality”, “facts” and so on.
I have already admitted that warrior has better DPS than ranger. No argument about that. Why does warrior have better DPS? Because that’s typical for warrior.
I have already admitted that guardian has better healing than ranger. No argument about that. Why does guardian have better healing? Because that’s typical for guardian. I can’t see what point you’re making by kicking in open doors.
My point is that ranger does both which makes the class a valuable supporting class. You dont seem to get that.
Btw: i got a fully geared up warrior. What exotic armour or ascended armour has got to do with reasoning in a decent way I dont know. But then again, your opinions are “facts” and you definitely dont like them to be questioned. Not a very sound base of thinking, and that’s just my opinion, not a fact.

(edited by Zoef.2761)

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Posted by: swiftpaw.6397

swiftpaw.6397

I came to similar conclusion as many people here after playing ranger at 80. Ranger is just bad in end game content. They have poor support, and have to work twice as hard to just deal damage, which comes naturally for other classes. Pets are a dead horse. No point in beating it further.
I watched the recent dev interview and does not look promising either. So if you wanna run end game content – do yourself a favor and reroll.

it’s acceptable if you are a skilled player.

For my ranger in dungeons I run full glass cannon with Longbow/shortbow, quickness on pet swap. I also take muddy terrain and Entangle for some excellent CC in places like fractals shaman boss and charr fractals charging warriors.

Please do not ever use longbow. You are willingly making yourself a waste of a party slot. Use Axe/Warhorn for your second set. At least you can throw some buffs and bleeds on swap instead of just doing horrid DPS that nobody will even notice if it is gone.

Actually you can hit as high as 14k shots with rapid fire on longbow as full glass cannon+ food, Add in Piercing arrows trait, and that’s some very nice AOE damage.

I would not say that is nothing and not noticeable. In fact when we do shaman boss, if the dps isnt high enough in my pug to take down the vets, i’ll grab the ranger and spike them down no problem. With quickness on pet swap + quickening zephire, you can almost always have quickness up to run through your longbow rapid fire, barrage and +10 vulnerability shot, then you can switch to shortbow again to maintain the DPS. Add in your openning shots trait, thats +15 stacks of aoe vaulnerability. Your barrage also serves a large aoe damage and cripple to slow mobs, particularly useful in dredge fractal. Even Point Blank Shot can be used very effectively to line up and shoot back charging warriors in the charr fract, or other undesired mobs.

Warhorn’s birds are nice, but the fury skill is useless because you can trait to gain fury on weapon swap anyway, and a warrior in your party will always be a better source of fury than you are, Also that one stack of might and swiftness is a bit of a joke. And speaking of bad damage, the axe is rather poor.

You are ( I suppose) referring to a condition build, but this is not the only build available and I find it rather sad that you would belittle others because they don’t do the same as you.

Grandmaster Forum Mind Brain
|-Swiftpaw Sharpclaw [DnT]-|

(edited by swiftpaw.6397)

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Posted by: Renegade.6325

Renegade.6325

Zoef:

“My point is that ranger does both which makes the class a valuable supporting class. "

It does not bring enough support to compensate for the loss of dps. Ill budge on that conclusion if you can provide some things that you can do to keep people alive. 1 water field is not enough.

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Posted by: Zoef.2761

Zoef.2761

Swiftpaw: nice to see at least someone knows what he’s talking about. These guys are so caught up in their own biases and their own preferences that they can’t imagine that there is more to rangers than what they possibly can imagine.
Using quickness is indeed the key, either by pet swapping or using QZ.
When one of these socalled experts advises u to use axe and warhorn and no longbow, it says it all.
Renegade: tell me how much dps does a warrior do lying on his back? They can only do dps because other classes try to keep them alive. When i get into trouble playing ranger it’s either because i screwed up or because i’m trying to heal or revive a heavy lying on his back.
Each time u do a heavy boss, warriors go ranged otherwise they’re down in a couple of secs, doing a “lot of dps” on their back. Rangers do more damage with lb at range than warriors with shotgun. Typical comments: “Guess this game is not meant for melee; Heal…; Stupid pet…” The only way warriors can do damage is because they’re kept alive by the rest of the group, including rangers.
“One waterfield is not enough”: that might be true. For some heavies an ocean wouldnt do the trick.

(edited by Zoef.2761)

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Posted by: Renegade.6325

Renegade.6325

Again, these morons youve invented for the sake of a poor argument are not diminishing my point. I feel like im swapping between two major points here. Rangers cant do anything better than war mes guard, and this only is relevant to decent players. Each time I explain one you forget the other.

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Posted by: Vox Hollow.2736

Vox Hollow.2736

Again, these morons youve invented for the sake of a poor argument are not diminishing my point. I feel like im swapping between two major points here. Rangers cant do anything better than war mes guard, and this only is relevant to decent players. Each time I explain one you forget the other.

[deadpan]

Oh, yes,

How dare they make broad sweeping generalizations of classes by grossly oversimplifying combat and player skill while parading around cherry-picked, wildly impractical, hypotheticals as standard play.

For shame, fellas.
For shame.

[/deadpan]

(edited by Vox Hollow.2736)

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Posted by: Leo G.4501

Leo G.4501

@Leo G.4501
You don’t know and you don’t trust me. Fine, then go and try it, end of story.

The reason trust isn’t happening is primarily because you say nothing to back it up besides “Everyone else admits it, so it’s True!!! Promise!”.

Yeah, no. People parade their opinion on things on the forum, always wildly generalizing things with misconceived theories, artificially generated scenarios mix with outright being wrong. And the error never wants to be corrected. The forum will go on thinking they’re right and regurgitating the same nonsense despite being wrong, despite evidence to the contrary. All you point to is War/Mesmer speed running CoF 1 and the number of shiny boons of a Guardian or the other posts bashing Ranger as evidence.

I don’t simply mistrust the opinion of the forums and yourself, I think it’s wrong. Utilizing a class and their weapons/tools properly can go a long way and I feel at least 40% of the back talk on the class is due to poor utilization. Another 30% is just the minority min/maxers theorycrafting scenarios.

Of course, I could be wrong in all of this, but it doesn’t seem like it. Maybe if the haters weren’t all talking in hyperbolish, their opinion might sound logical. But I could work on another bullet point on my lengthening list of “What the forums was wrong about”.

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Posted by: Trollhammer.7439

Trollhammer.7439

Trollhammer: U are simply not capable of making the distinction between facts and your own narrowminded opinions. Calling your opinion a fact doesn’t make it a fact. It just shows how shallow your reasoning is and how weak your arguments. That’s the reason you call your opinions “reality”, “facts” and so on.
I have already admitted that warrior has better DPS than ranger. No argument about that. Why does warrior have better DPS? Because that’s typical for warrior.
I have already admitted that guardian has better healing than ranger. No argument about that. Why does guardian have better healing? Because that’s typical for guardian. I can’t see what point you’re making by kicking in open doors.
My point is that ranger does both which makes the class a valuable supporting class. You dont seem to get that.
Btw: i got a fully geared up warrior. What exotic armour or ascended armour has got to do with reasoning in a decent way I dont know. But then again, your opinions are “facts” and you definitely dont like them to be questioned. Not a very sound base of thinking, and that’s just my opinion, not a fact.

You are talking out of your kitten and I already told you why. All you have left is getting all defensive with your typical “oh its just your opinion” bs. No, it is not.
Fact: rangers are highly suboptimal for end game.
Fact: most people recognize the above statement as fact.
Fact: you don’t have sufficient experience with another class to see the difference.
Stop defending your favorite class out of childish pride, and try out other toons. They are better at what they do and with much less effort. There is absolutely nothing that ranger brings to the team that is valuable, not one thing, nor as a package.