Guild Wars 2

in comparison to hunters from WoW. I really enjoyed my hunter, and I was wondering if rangers had the same feel. (Just got the game and I’m deciding on my class). Also, are they considered a strong class overall?

You will be highly disappointed.

They’re even disappointing compared to gw1 rangers.

They are pretty bad compared to others, I recommend making another class – preferably not an engineer either!

Grizor.6543:

They are pretty bad compared to others, I recommend making another class – preferably not an engineer either!

If you’re looking for a WoW hunter then you will be disappointed. However for all the people you will find saying they hate the class, there are just as many that love it. Try it for yourself, you may like it.

ranger is a meh class.

I love my Ranger (80, and I also have an 80 Guardian and 80 Warrior). I wouldn’t call the class disappointing at all, but then again my wife loves her Engineer (80, and she also has an 80 Mesmer and 80 Guardian). Perhaps it’s because we always duo?

Set your expectations very low and you won’t be disappointed. Same goes for Necromancer.

I’m not sure about PvE but in WvW I’ve seen an increase in berserker archers. They use short bow mostly and kite you around spamming their auto attack, which hits quite hard with full Pow/Prec/Crit. I play bunker Guardian and Elementalist mostly and they’re quite irritating to fight Also pets are a pain in the kitten :P

There isn’t much to them though, they seem to be lacking something since warriors can also use bows etc too and they also have a primary play style which is unique

I love my Ranger, I gave it a shot and was surprised how much fun I’m having with her. I like switching between my shortbow and axe/horn as the situation calls for it, plus I like collecting and naming the different pets during exploration, love seeing my shark munch on my enemies. Not to mention kiting in this game allows you to avoid some of the headaches that comes with the “no trinity” mantra.

I am someone that mained warlock and fire mage in WoW for a looong time. I stopped WoW, and started playing GW2. My first choice was necro, got disappointed because any build that I wanted to play (like … dagger necro, or axe necro, anything without pets and condi dmg) was weak, traits were boring and didn’t impact my gameplay much. Than I tried ele, engi, everything one by one. If not ranger class I wouldnt be playing this game anymore, it is still bit boring but not because of my class choice waiting for some additions to pvp modes / pve combat so I can get hooked like I once was by WoW.

The class is struggling right now, having little diversity in builds and some pretty mediocre weapon skills. Even the builds that have potential are not very capable of achieving the damage or survival of the other professions.

Some skills, most notably spirits are either marginally effective in incredibly specific situations or down right useless otherwise.

All that having been said, progress while slow is being made, with recent pet fixes spearheading what most currently playing the class will be significant re-tooling of the more glaring issues.

As a hunter from wow, and Ranger from gw1, rift, lotro, eq2,vanguard,aoc,daoc and any other title with a bow class I can honestly say arena net is closer to my ideal Ranger than anyone has come… However they still have a lot of work to do.

Please, my ranger is a PvE monster. Don’t expect to rule the WvW aspect and you won’t be disappointed.

I tag tons of players to get my kills, but in my current spec have hard time dropping anyone one on one. Then again, i run like a little girl (no offense to little girls, lol).

End of the day, it one of my favorite classes. Hope that helps. : )

Rangers, Engineers and Necromancers seem to be the just for fun classes imo, if you play for fun they are ok, if you’re competitive nope they don’t hold up…

My ranger rocks in WvW. She’s a fabergé cannon who can bring down serious pain in a large area. She easily racks up more kills than any of my other toons because she’s every bit as good sitting far away raining down arrows on defenders who think they’re safe on theirs walls as she is being the one sitting safe on the walls.

She’s pretty good in PvE too. Her downside is sPvP where she just doesn’t have enough dumb meat shields to hide behind

we need more female charr rangers

Uhh…Yeahhhh ….if you really enjoy a WoW Hunter, you’re going to be sad when you play a GW2 Ranger. This is coming from someone who is NOT a casual player. I’m not talking about leveling, I’m talking about Competitive play / Fractals / Exp Dungeons / WvW. It’s one of the weakest classes because of it’s bugs, low damage and it’s class mechanic (your pet) is in a horrible state right now. But for leveling, it’s fine.

I still enjoy Rangers only because I enjoy using Bows / playing Archer classes. Not because I think Rangers are a strong class (not in it’s current state). I’m sure they have some buffs and fixes coming in one of the larger patches early this year (Jan/Feb/March).

PS: To the person who said they liked collecting and naming pets, another Ranger bug is that your pet names don’t save lol.

They are not much different than every other class, bland and boring with a 5skill bar.

as an old salty hunter I can tell you that you’ll be disappointed

I was because of no personal connection to pets
no rare pets to hunt

I find my ranger to be a very strong PvE class; she rarely dies (can’t comment on WvW or PvP because I don’t do it). However…. I find the play style to be rather bland in contrast to my elementalist, or even, my warrior.

I have not played WoW, but I did play a Hunter in LOTRO, and I find the LOTRO hunter to be much more fun. (and that was without pets, which I actually preferred)

I’m not saying the ranger is a terrible class, but it lacks spice. If you use traps it gets better, since they provide variety, but still..

Enjoyed rangers in gw1 enormously. The week before gw2 release i was gonna make my main as a ranger because they were good in pve and amazing in pvp (gw1) so thought it’ll be pretty much the same since its guild wars. Bought the game, started on ranger, played to level 18 and W T F? Kept playing, got to lev24 it felt like playing an extremely weak and useless class… Was tired of leveling up so i went to spvp to try to run something similar to what i was running in gw1. No block skills, 1 rupt+push back rupt, no burning or poison on bows (who came with this idea i don’t know lolz), can’t spam cripple like you could in gw1 and most importantly you have only ONE stun breaker hahaha. After some hours in spvp i find this is not just the worst class in gw2 (by a long shot) but the weakest ranger class in any rpg’s i’ve ever played, eveeeeeer. Complete garbage profession! From awesome to trash.

Rangers can be pretty strong in 1v1 or small skirmishes within the w3 setting. I’m not sure about spvp because I’ve never tried a ranger with it, but in w3, my drakehound literally chases people down and kills them while healing and tanking through any damage. I am using 30 BM with max cleric gear and jewels. My own damage is obviously abysmal, but it’s funny to see a 25 stacked Master’s Bond canine go batkitten insane and heal through almost everything. More of a niche built, but very entertaining and has good usage in WvW and to some extent in general PvE.

Though of course, in big zergs, your best bet is to keep your pet near and take manual control over when he wants to attack or stay. But in small skirmishes/1v1, my canines can give pretty nice pressure, and dish out some nice burst and CC.

I’ve had a couple hearty chuckles from troubled people who I found isolated from afar and sent my pet out to engage them while I stood in place and watched in amusement. An unfortunate mesmer was actually chased to death because of some glitch or something, my pet locked on him through all his clones for some strange reason. I was watching from an outpost and the crazy pet just did not give up the chase lol.

But as a whole, the ranger suffers a lot of problems that will hopefully be fixed in the coming months!

Make a thief and use the short bow. You won’t have to rely on kitten pets and you will rock in PvP. The difference is like playing old counterstrike and the AWP vs the default pistol.

The very fact that the only ever really pvp competitive build we had relied heavily on degen damage should tell you enough.

Some people don’t seem to know the Gw2 ranger class very well…

As far as compared to a WoW hunter? I have no idea.

Are they strong…? Yes and no. While the class is fun overall, there are many times where you might just get plain frustrated with it due to bugs and some areas where they are extremely unbalanced compared to others (this is mostly due to pets; they sometimes work, but other times they can be just plain frustrating).

PvE I find that my ranger does great. Probably the biggest thing that bugs me in this area are pets just taking it up the rear (and you can’t really control them precisely either: at most you can call them back to your general area, which doesn’t help if you are at melee range, or; by sacrificing a utility slot, tell them to go guard a general area in which they can pretty much be anywhere within that area).

WvW, my ranger is great. I can take on pretty much any class 1v1 and do well in groups too. The downside, again, is mostly pets…

Pets can be good, but in very, very specific scenarios where pathing isn’t too bad. Don’t expect too much from the pets, but don’t really think they are purely useless either (they still have use; just not always directly from the pets themselves lol). Its almost like another rng element in the game lol; you have a chance they work one moment and a chance they are completely broken and useless the next (whereas other classes have more control over their “mechanic” and if they kitten its usually their own fault).

As far as builds go, there is a decent variety I have found that work well in both PvE and WvW (personally not really into spvp…). You just have to know what you are doing and how to do it; although there are a few almost essential things for any ranger build (aka quickness lol; putting at least 5 points into BM for that pet swap quickness can do wonders).

Rangers can be fun, and if and when they actually fix pets to be more reliable than in a few situations; they will be in a very good position balance wise (then again thats if and when lol). At the moment they are decent; warriors are a better bet for PvE and WvW, thieves and eles are good choice for pvp, and Mesmers can just plain irritate groups in WvW lol.

If you like the idea of having a (sometimes useless) companion at your side, then ranger is definitely a good pick; just be prepared for some moments of frustration when your pet decides to kitten and/or troll you.

properly built ranger is very strong in PVE.

the problem in WWW is PVE glass builds

Lalangamena.3694:

properly built ranger is very strong in PVE.

Funny, I’ve never seen one. Care to enlighten me?

After they nerfed the only good DPS skill which keeps rangers on par with everyone else ( since all the other short bow skills are situationaly) I rerolled, or rather revisited my thief, got him to a nice level of damage not even running cookie cutter, then Anet decided to nerf thief…

Id roll a warrior.

Rangers are disappointing for their lack of build options.

In many MMOs classes with a pet option have the choice of building around the pet or not. And, given that MMOs have awful AI most players elect to have a pet for landscape PvE as a DPS or Tank buff and ignore the pet for more complex content.

In GW2 the ranger is. a. pet. class. There’s now way around it, you didn’t roll a scout or archer, you rolled a. pet. class – because they said so.

Problem is this is an MMO and your pet is a NPC, therefore about as bright as the average root vegetable. C. 30% of your DPS and survivability is tied to the pet; unfortunately the pet can’t hit moving targets (bye bye PvP DPS) and makes no effort to avoid AoE damage (bye bye Dungeon DPS/survivability).

Look at the other bow classes. If you want to scout roll a thief, if you want to ranged DPS roll a warrior.

Breath of fresh air after my 80 elementalist. Yeah the pets are wonky, but I honestly only depend on them as a meat shield. I’ve only gotten him to lvl 24 but so far I’m enjoying him.

took a hunter to 80 and have a lot of fun with her. Did not like the lotro ranger and have never played wow so can’t compare there. I run orr in green magic find gear and have no problems at all, I have exotics for dungeons and do not have problems there. I don’t pvp in any form so if that is your goal look to the others that do it on a regular basis. Usually run with a tank bearish pet and a range pet and switch them around when they get confused.

Rangers are the same as they have always been; they rely on an AI companion, therefor they will always be the most troublesome class. The Ranger in GW2 has improved over time though, especially the pet AI. And even though the profession could use some more fixes, people tend to greatly exaggerate how bad the profession is. The biggest problem with the Ranger right now, is the major issue with how mixed/bad the Rangers traits are. But I wouldn’t completely discard the Ranger, as there will be more fixes to come. At the very least, you should try it out for yourself.

Coming from 2,4k S11 WoW hunter (Dreaded, EU). You can’t compare Hunter to Ranger, especially Cata Hunter and MM. Ranger play is not a wonder, you’re decent class in PvE as in W3, however you kack of mobility/tricks in any real kind of skilled pvp. Pets are broken in pvp (incredibly slow reaction to your commands, mostly their utilities). Play is more static, less precise, about luck and wonders, horrible strafe and kiting. It’s just totally different, expecting MM from current state of ranger is too much, it doesn’t exist. However, if you enjoy Survival you’ll be surprised about nice shortbow, BM is also a good option. Try it:)

Nurse.1085:

…PS: To the person who said they liked collecting and naming pets, another Ranger bug is that your pet names don’t save lol.

Yeah, I’m aware of that and I submitted a bug report here and ingame
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At this point I’m not bothering with WvWvW but I’m not really having a problem in PvE and last I checked sPvP is dead as disco.