Guild Wars 2

Since some professions are more favored as compared to others, I want to start GW2 with the most hated profession Thanks

Ranger.

The only class that people specifically write in “LFG” to stay off, like “LFG CoF P1 (No rangers)”

It does not suck but just people hate it?

Rangers kinda suck and that is why people hate it.
The real problem with ranger is that bad rangers are way worse than a bad warrior, guardian or any other class, but a good ranger can do wonders.

Beautiful, something that I want. Was thinking of engineers though

I love my ranger – she’s not top of the DPS charts but she’s got lots of tricks up her sleeve. You do no damage when you’re dead and she’s very good at staying alive. I’ve soloed certain group events with her – there are some champs she has trouble taking on, but I’m fairly happy with what she can do. You do have to understand how to use your pet though. I leave mine on passive and micromanage it in harder fights.

The engineer is also tons of fun, but folks like them better for groups because there is no pet to be mismanaged and they have group buffs/heals. Honestly I think most of the ranger hate is due to folks not understanding how to use their pets.

Is there any guide to managing your pet?

I’d definitely say ranger is the most hated.

I’d also say a lot of that is undeserved. Like Pandemoniac said it’s not that they’re actually a bad class, it’s more that they’re deceptively hard to be good with and a lot of people who play them don’t realise that.

Engineers and elementalists are also difficult to master, but it’s relatively clear right from the start that’s the case because early on they’re very squishy and you’ve got to figure out dodging and good positioning and making good use of all your skills to be able to do anything.

Whereas in basic open-world PvE a ranger can get by auto-attacking with a longbow at max range while their pet (or other NPCs or players) keep the enemies away. It’s not a good strategy – it’s slow and inefficient and if an enemy does get close you’re in trouble – but it’s easy to pick up so a lot of new players will start off doing that.

The problem is some never learn to do anything else. They try to do the exact same thing in a dungeon where combat is a lot more complicated, in a much smaller space (so you can’t get to max range) and there’s only 4 other people to help, who are absolutely not going to be your meatshields. But they’re stuck because they haven’t learned to do anything else.

I did a dungeon the other day with a level 68 ranger who didn’t know it was possible to swap pets or weapons in combat, didn’t know what key he had dodge on because he never used it, wasn’t sure which of his weapons were melee and which were ranged, didn’t know what the differences between the pets are….all this stuff had been available to him for ages but he’d never used any of it, never even had to think about it. (I gave him some pointers in the dungeon and recommended he come here and read the ranger section to learn more.)

But rangers definitely can be good, in all areas of the game (I don’t play PvP but I’ve heard that’s the case). You just need to know the class, know the situation and know how to make the two fit together. It will never be as easy as playing a warrior or guardian, but IMO a lot more fun – ranger, elementalist and engineer are my 3 favourite professions. Warriors and guardians I struggle to play because I get bored.

I don’t mind any class, but Rangers unfortunately get permanently stuck with pets, and these pets often mess up things in dungeons because you can’t stow them in combat. They need to learn how and when to tell them to return to them.

To make it clear, ranger is my main since beta.
I love it, in my previous regen/cond build I soloed Snowblind fractal lvl 1, with my current power build I soloed the Dredge Commissar w/o even swapping my pet (no deaths).
I do really well in WvW, and in dungeons I’m usually the last man stand and no one ever complained about my damage.

It’s probably also worth mentioning that I’ve never actually had a problem getting a group while playing a ranger. It’s only speed run groups and people who don’t really know what they’re talking about who will refuse to let rangers in.

But I think that’s the nearest this game has to a hated profession.

I love Ranger, it’s like my 2nd main.. The only problem is, the only people who wanted to run (take note: wanted to run with me, not wanted me to run) with me are guildies – and they kinda like won’t take me as a Ranger but since I’m a guildie, nah. lol

This is even if I’m using sword/warhorn/dagger, using Frost Spirit, feline pet…

PvE: Rangers mostly (Necros get some hate)

PvP: Warriors or engis

WvW: Thieves!

Do you mean hated because X class is annoying or perceived to be overpowered? Or hated because it’s perceived to be subpar and nobody wants them on their team?

Great Question, great thread! Keep it up please! I am enjoying the opinions!

Thief for sure. Everyday someone goes to thief subforum to complain how OP thieves are, that stealth is totally OP, backstab is OP, and it’s the only class that has been constantly nerfed since game release

Rangers are just fine, the players are the ones to be hated

I originally had a dislike of Rangers when bots of them would zerg areas so badly they were unplayable. I don’t anymore and have one of my own. I do understand that having a pet as a buddy can be fun in PvE, in a group, it’s an albatross that can cause headache.

Thief is most hated in WvW for being ‘OP’. It’s more or less the strongest 1v1 class in a WvW 1v1 roaming context… and herein lies the problem.

People don’t generally cry about a class when it’s a 5v5 fight and one side loses. They don’t know which player was the one that decided the game, or if it was the overall team effort that did. They don’t cry about guardians in a 80 man zerg, they cry about the zerg numbers.

So when people must complain about something, it will be in a 1v1 context. And since that’s where the thief’s abilities are best applied… the result is obvious.

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Ranger is most hated in PvE because of two problems.

1. The average ranger player is incompetent at being a ranger.
2. The average non-ranger player is incompetent at being a ranger.

Therefore, the overall perception is that the class is underpowered, which is made worse by the generally bad skill level of its players. This is extremely misleading.

Rangers are built, class-mechanic wise, to deal both condition and direct damage simultaneously. They are not built to specialise in one or another. The average player is not capable of thinking in both direct and condition terms at the same time. The most effective damage-based builds must run Rampager or Carrion. And the number of builds that follow this rule in existence is single digit, and they are all not in the current ranger meta.

A properly specced damage ranger has 5000 damage per second before the effects of might, and is played like a thief, without stealth, with a pet. It outdamages all other builds except a particular dps-focused mesmer variety, but does almost the same damage as that at a much higher potential range. The disadvantage is that to achieve this it uses max bleed and poison under ~ 1500 condition damage conditions, so you can have only one of this kind of ranger or a necro in a party. The moment you have two, things start to become far less efficient since only one of them will have their damage properly registered.

The support ranger is also feasible, of which one of the builds is in the current ranger meta. Spirits are used liberally in this, and the ranger’s job in this context is to buff others and keep others alive. However, this build is pointless in the overly easy PvE backdrop, and only really comes into its element in WvW.

If compared to a necro in terms of overall dps against a single target, the ranger is greater. If compared to a necro in terms of overall survivability, the ranger is greater. If compared to a necro in terms of overall dps against very large numbers of targets, the necro is greater.

In summary, the ranger class is hated in PvE because people don’t know how to use it.

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The most hated in sPvP is the ele, for two reasons again.

1. It’s the hardest class in the game to play by a wide margin. Most of its users suck at it.
2. It’s very badly balanced for sPvP as the class revolves around booning and AoE damage. In an environment where boons can be easily removed or even stolen, this role is invalidated. In an environment where people don’t ever bunch up, AoE is weakened. Builds that do not boon do not play to the class’s niche, and therefore are weak. A non-boon damage based FA elementalist will never match a warrior of equal skill, because the class was not originally designed with that in mind. An AoE elementalist generally never hits enough targets to be worth the party’s while.

Now, OP, do you want to be hated in WvW, PvE or sPvP?

Doggie.3184:

I don’t mind any class, but Rangers unfortunately get permanently stuck with pets, and these pets often mess up things in dungeons because you can’t stow them in combat. They need to learn how and when to tell them to return to them.

The problems with pets in dungeons is first that players don’t put them on passive and direct their attacks intelligently, second players don’t choose the right pets for the situation they’re heading into, and last that players don’t take full advantage of the ability to swap pets to keep them from getting killed.

I don’t understand why some rangers don’t want their pets out. You get two extra abilities you can control, additional combo fields/finishers (although you usually can’t control when they happen), plus you’re able to deal damage to two targets at once no matter how they’re positioned (the one you’re attacking and the one your pet is attacking).

I think that most players new to the game look at a ranged pet class and think it will be easy mode. They try to play it like a WoW hunter and are disappointed because their pets can’t tank, the CC abilities aren’t designed to keep things at range indefinitely (they’re more about interrupting attacks), and they don’t really understand the importance of the mobility skills.

My ranger is my most active class – I’m constantly moving, checking what my pet is doing, saving my situational skills for the right moment, looking for opportunities to interrupt big attacks, keeping an eye on my vigor for my dodging, swapping weapons and pets to give myself different boons, etc. I love it, but I think it is the opposite of what folks expect when they look at the class description.

Thief – nuff said.

Wow Rangers seem like the top of the chart ( The Chosen Ones ). Oh and to reply about what I perceived as the most hated profession, I would say it’s a profession whereby people see in PVP, WVW, SPVP, people will just wanna scold their balls out due to them being either really crap or really OP. P.S : Pardon my command of the language and I can’t reply much due to being in GMT+8 time

Plaide.9203:

Wow Rangers seem like the top of the chart ( The Chosen Ones ). Oh and to reply about what I perceived as the most hated profession, I would say it’s a profession whereby people see in PVP, WVW, SPVP, people will just wanna scold their balls out due to them being either really crap or really OP. P.S : Pardon my command of the language and I can’t reply much due to being in GMT+8 time

Based on this definition, I would say thief.

Hayashi.3416:

Rangers are built, class-mechanic wise, to deal both condition and direct damage simultaneously. They are not built to specialise in one or another. The average player is not capable of thinking in both direct and condition terms at the same time. The most effective damage-based builds must run Rampager or Carrion. And the number of builds that follow this rule in existence is single digit, and they are all not in the current ranger meta.

This is a big part of why I like playing a ranger. I always go for hybrid builds in any RPG because I like to have a few different options for how I do damage. At the very least I want to be able to switch between different types of attacks so if one is less effective I can try something else, ideally I’d like to be doing a few different kinds of damage at the same time. Which is exactly what the ranger does.

My build is designed to split my damage about equally between conditions and direct (with about 50% critical hits doing double damage) and between me and my pet, with AoE thrown in when possible so that if an enemy is immune to one type or knocks me down or whatever they’re still going to be hit by damage coming from other directions. And when necessary I can tell my pet to attack one enemy while I take out another.

Fortunately I also enjoy builds that are more challenging (not because they’re weaker but because they require more effort to make them work). I was actually disappointed when first Oblivion and then Skyrim to an even greater extent made my hybrid stealth spellsword khajiit build easier to make and play than in Morrowind, after I spent ages getting the hang of it.

Danikat.8537:

Fortunately I also enjoy builds that are more challenging (not because they’re weaker but because they require more effort to make them work). I was actually disappointed when first Oblivion and then Skyrim to an even greater extent made my hybrid stealth spellsword khajiit build easier to make and play than in Morrowind, after I spent ages getting the hang of it.

I used a khajiit with a shield and heavy armor, and punched everything to death. No spells, no weapons. Just armor, smithing and enchanting. It also enforced no lockpicking, no murder, no pickpocketing.

Because of how the level scales in Skyrim, I was actually very much stronger than most other builds. It ended with punching Alduin to death.

I’ve played several other builds, but nothing was as viscerally appealing as punching things to death, so I’ve never killed him again since.

Shouts were used of course, because we’re forced to use them to progress the storyline.

Back to topic, a ranger friend of mine gave me a few builds that average at about 4000 direct damage per second under perfect conditions (max range, 25 might, 25 vulnerability).

It doesn’t even come close to 5000 direct+condition damage per second under nearly any conditions… (potentially breaching 7000 dps under perfect conditions) though I was kind of surprised that it could be played like that.

Plaide.9203:

either really crap or really OP

Ranger gets the most hate for being crap, Warrior gets the most hate for being unstoppable, Thief gets the most hate for being unkillable/annoying.

People quite wrongfully hate on rangers, but it’s the players being bearbows that are the problem, not rangers themselves. Rangers offer spotter, frost spirit, fury from warhorn and solid DPS.

I hate all of the classes equally because whenever I roll dungeons, most people don’t actually play them properly, and a cleric “healer” guard isn’t actually any better than a bearbow ranger.

While I agree that rangers are definitely the most hated class in PvE it really is because people misunderstand why it’s hated. Most of the rangers posting here failed to understand that as well. I can’t address all the issues in each statement but I’ll touch upon a few that tend to aggrivate me.

“I can solo such-and-such champs” – Well sure I can solo them to and faster at that on any other profession because I’m not micromanaging 30+% of my DPS.

“I’m usually the last one standing in groups”. This one I find the mst humourous as they tend to be people who sit at far range pewpewing on a bow – outside the range of all the melee offering them little to no support and a severely hampered DPS due to being outside their buff range. Congratulations you survived while the party died due to an unnecessarily extended fight and now have to endure 15-30 minutes of your solo hero attempt at the boss. Bearbow or catbow or whatever pet you want to play – this is still an extremely selfish style of playing and is often misunderstood as being a great for the above reasons. This is just a couple reasons why I’d prefer a full clerics guardian over rangers with this type of mentality. That guard is serving a purpose
I.e. Removing conditions, keeping up protection on the party, adding to DPS via might stacks and retaliation, providing heals, reflection, all while in melee dishing out damage – ready to res the fallen.

With this in mind I have met handful of good rangers even in non speed clear runs who make useful contributions – spotter, spirits, in melee to both give and receive buffs, and the big thing I’ve rarely seen using healing spring to help other members in the party clear conditions or to blast heal with warhorn.

A lot of people say the issue is bearbow rangers, I believe its not just using a lower dps pet but more so the use of a bow in general.

Ranger or Necro

It xould be interesting that Anet give some class stats: % of each class played each month (McM and Pve), Adding the class on the McM/PvP ranking, etc…

For me I’d say a thief over ranger in PvE/dungeons- I’ve only ever been in a party with 1 good thief because he could actually stay alive without going invisible. Otherwise, I’d say thieves in dungeons are only good for SR & I’ll think that until proven wrong in dungeons; No offense to thieves btw; atleast rangers, even bearbow rangers can AoE heal

For PvE could please a separation be made between dungeons/fractals and exploring area’s.

Becos for exploring area’s, imho, Ranger is my best and most favourite class
(Necro second and Ele most hated).

Psst. Bearbow has its uses. The shortbow does incredible amounts of bleed damage, and the bear having very high base toughness draws aggro so you can easily stay in its back arc and stack MOAR bleeds. Though in dungeons, the bear is usually not as useful as the Lashtail Devourer, which adds MOAR bleed and also has a superhigh bleed spec. Unless your party’s condi cleansers fail and you already used up your Healing Spring, in which case the Brown Bear’s F2 becomes useful.

Now if you were a power spec and using a longbow from 1200 range, then that would be a problem. Out of range of might, not really taking your share of aggro/damage, breaking the melee stack pattern for CoE bosses, etc etc etc. Don’t hate on condi shortbows.

Btw, the Axe/whatever + Shortbow combination is best used at sub 100 unit ranges so all five poison arrows/all five bleed axes can hit. They’re not melee weapons but sure as heck do much better in melee than further away. The only case in which this build fails is for the singular fight in TA F/F where you have to hit the rangers in perm projectile nullification bubbles. Any condi ranger will have to carry a backup sword if ever running that dungeon.

Also, boonstacking eles is the best build for map exploration. 21+ might on demand, perm swiftness, and very high damage multiplier Lightning Hammer on demand are no joke.

I hate rangers the most.
Rangers can be a huge boon to any group with spotter and a 70% frost spirit but the key word is “can”. If you don’t take the effort to scrape off all the awful rangers from your group then what you’ll inevitably get is some good for nothing bearbow who does nothing but sit at max range pew-pew-pewing away with his longbow doing absolutely no damage, letting the bear agro anything you don’t want agro’d and using his knockback on cd resulting in your nicely grouped enemies being all over the place again.
I wait to see what kind of ranger is joining because if I see that 70% frost spirit and spotter buff then I’m going to love you more than many other classes if I’m the only warrior. However quite a few will kick you on sight of that paw symbol.

Hate Ele. Too much work for me and seems more like a job than playing a game. I usually get stuck playing in Fire the whole time or Water if doing WvW. Then Im basically not playing half the class. Im not a MMO n00b by any means but just too much work having to stance dance and use twice the stuff every other class uses only to be less effective.

Psst. Bearbow has its uses. The shortbow does incredible amounts of bleed damage, and the bear having very high base toughness draws aggro so you can easily stay in its back arc and stack MOAR bleeds. Though in dungeons, the bear is usually not as useful as the Lashtail Devourer, which adds MOAR bleed and also has a superhigh bleed spec. Unless your party’s condi cleansers fail and you already used up your Healing Spring, in which case the Brown Bear’s F2 becomes useful.

But condition damage is bad in dungeons, so then bleeds become irrelevant. So what ends up happening is you have a low DPS pet, and are using a low DPS weapon so you’re being a dead weight for your party.

Now if you were a power spec and using a longbow from 1200 range, then that would be a problem. Out of range of might, not really taking your share of aggro/damage, breaking the melee stack pattern for CoE bosses, etc etc etc. Don’t hate on condi shortbows.
Btw, the Axe/whatever + Shortbow combination is best used at sub 100 unit ranges so all five poison arrows/all five bleed axes can hit. They’re not melee weapons but sure as heck do much better in melee than further away. The only case in which this build fails is for the singular fight in TA F/F where you have to hit the rangers in perm projectile nullification bubbles. Any condi ranger will have to carry a backup sword if ever running that dungeon.

Condi specs are bad, and a good ranger takes sword and whichever off-hand is most relevant to the situation.

A good ranger is hard to come by but they are superb in Every aspect of the game. It gets old seeing ‘lfg no rangers’ b/c of ignorant players (both those playing them and those who hate them without exception). Last night though in a bit of irony, I happened to run across “CoF P1, Rangers only”!!! it was, hands down, the fastest, most efficient p1 clear I’ve ever been a part of (nobody had to coach, direct, etc.) everyone knew what they were doing and not one person went down the entire run, we lit the braziers first try in about 4 secs, then knocked out the gate in about 5 seconds, and just completely wrecked the dungeon. It was so much fun. Just a random pug ranger group lol. I’ll say it one last time…hands down the fastest, smoothest, most well played p1 clear I’ve ever been a part of. I have 8 geared 80s and have played them all in every aspect of the game just for some context for anyone who thinks I’m out of line or “don’t know about such and such”. Rangers are beast mode…see what I did there lol

Warrior hates mesmer
Mesmer hates ranger
Ranger hates thief
Thief hates necro
Necro hates ele
Ele hates engi
Engi hates guardian
Guardian hates warrior

The circle of life continues…

I personally hate condi bunker warriors with banner regen.

Belzebu.3912:

Rangers kinda suck and that is why people hate it.
The real problem with ranger is that bad rangers are way worse than a bad warrior, guardian or any other class, but a good ranger can do wonders.

I would like to second that notion because with the help of an elementalist I was able to take down the cave troll in the AC dungeon. It was a pretty intense fight but we were able to get through that and move through the dungeon.