rangers don't suck
the elite itself, changes according to your need, entangle is in my opinion the best pvp-elite, though when fighting a boss in pve, using rampage as one is preferable.
Also alot of ppl underestimate spirit of nature, it is by far the best party supporting skill (except for timewarp) around in my opinion.
It’s like having a pocket monk pulsing heal party, ofcourse there are traits that give spirits more health, but for this one and actually all the other spirits, it’s unnessecary, far more important is placement and a bit of brains.
When there’s heavy AoE, your spirits will die in mere seconds, but when the AoE isn’t all that hard you can easily set up nature spirit somewhere the AoE doesn’t strike often and when there’s no AoE you can place it anywhere as long as it doesn’t draw attention. Ofcourse in pvp, it’s fairly useless, ppl will kill your spirit, if you’re dying to use it, hide it well :p
when you need AoE damage yourself for example that chamber in CoF where the asura is arming the bomb, use traps, no use going for throwing traps in my opinion it’s a waist of time especially as you are immobile during the throw, better to be a normal trapper, u can still run and place your traps, at the very beginning, meaning before the spawn, place spiketrap+viper’s trap+flame trap, those are the three best traps imo, anyways place those three on top of eachother and stay put, when they spawn, your traps will activate, damaging them all at that very moment you use entanglement +dodge roll and use a barrage to finish them off, then switch to axe mainhand, warhorn offhand, “why?” some of you might ask, axe mainhand is an underestimated weapon imo, it’s a throwing weapon, giving you range, not only that it’s one of the best kiting weapons, u can easily solo CoE’s first alpha spawn with just an axe, not only is it the best kiting weapon because of the “winter’s bite skill” chilling your opponent, wich is obviously partly the reason, it’s also great because your camera doesn’t need to point straith at your opponent in order to fire, meaning it’s far more forgiving to fire while kiting, on top of that it bounces between enemies spreading the damage, the warhorn is there mostly for the swiftness/group swiftness wich further ups your kiting abilities through call of the wild and hunter’s call is not only a cool looking skill, through the traits of zerker ranger it also has a high chance to place some bleeding on the enemy, more then splitblade cause you need to be at close range for the 5 stacks of bleeding on one target.
as melee weapon i would advice mainhand longsword and offhand axe or warhorn, i know sword dagger is fun, but too much of a repetition of the short sword in my opinion, besides, whirling defense is one of the greatest skills in the entire game and can be a live-saver as a melee ranger.
as far as pets go, in pvp i would advice the hyena, cause it can duplicate itself turning on knockdown into two and the jaguar as a back-up because of it’s invisibilaty, always a nice perk to have :p don’t be afraid to sacrifice your first pet, it needs to hound the enemy enough and if it dies you have a back up, when switching, the switch sadly has a long cooldown, so recall your pet when nessecary, the petrecall counts for both pve and pvp, the button’s there so use it :p
now before i started going zerker ranger i was more of a bulky variety
now the bulky variety i used two ways, the one you see in the link is my dungeon build, awfully sustaining and also some party caring, more support then actually damage, i always kept the utility skills “signet of stone” and “signet of the wild” on me, for passive powers and sometimes activating active power when merrited the “protect me” isn’t a skill i braught with me all the time, though very usefull it’s a petkiller and you’ll see that with this build your pet is going to be your main damage output, btw this build isn’t for pvp purposes at all, at least in my experiences, anyways seeing as the key of this build is staying alive there’s not much else to be explained about it, only use a melee weapon with it if the situation requires you to have one with you, i mostly equipped brown bear and fern wolf because of the condition removal and regeneration, always nice to have those for a party :p, now back the the utility skill i changed alot… on hard parts to stay alive, i knew i would outlive at least someone so i took “search and rescue” with me for a rez where i don’t need to do a thing.
at other times i took signet of renewal for the extra condition removal that the passive effect has, wich is especially useful in the TA-dungeon or quickening zephyr for the hunter’s sjpt + rapid shot damage output, wich you’ll see will be remarkably less high then on the zerker build i discussed earlier.
In open pve, meaning not dungeons, i took traps + entanglement as utility skills + elite though never frost trap, i’m no fan of the skill, this build was great fun for i wanted to kill as much as possible in as short a time as possible, especially centaurs are such gullible fools to allow this, this build is therefor most fun in centaur areas :p just run up sick your pet on the melee guys, while you make your way to the ranged centaur, reel your pet in, thus everyone who’s currently aggroing it and place your traps + whirling defense + barrage + entanglement (entanglement if it’s really nessecary mostly a lifesaver instead of a real part of the combo, i’m thinking about two elite centaurs hounding you rather then 13 sissy centaurs hounding you) and ofcourse whenever a trap recharges use it, traps take priority on both whirling defense and barrage, it’s a great focused area of AoE that makes most of the AI in pve run back to their mommies :p
wel this is the main guideline of how i played ranger, enjoyed it alot and have heard the following things quite often…
in pve “you’re the best ranger i’ve ever seen” “finally a ranger that doesn’t just sit on a rock like a toad and fires the occasional arrow” or “are you gonna solo the alpha? type y for yes and n for no, if yes, i’m going for a smoke”
in pvp “I hate you hunter!” “ugh if you have to fire from the back at least give me a chance to turn around and shoot back” “wish you could run out of arrows”
i hope this guide helps, if any questions, feel free to ask, i will check this post every now and again (read not on a daily basis) have fun in GW2 and have fun playing ranger :p
Sure man, keep telling yourself that!
But my experience with rangers has been pretty poor, of course I can’t say they all suck as I’ve had 2 good ones that I can recall in the many runs I’ve done.. even those were guildies. Pug’s hate rangers unless they are rangers but I do think that they need a buff and think its a bit of an iffy profession at the minute.
Sure man, keep telling yourself that!
But my experience with rangers has been pretty poor, of course I can’t say they all suck as I’ve had 2 good ones that I can recall in the many runs I’ve done.. even those were guildies. Pug’s hate rangers unless they are rangers but I do think that they need a buff and think its a bit of an iffy profession at the minute.
Did you read the latest patch notes? Rangers got some much neded buffs and while they could still probably use a few more, the difference between pre patch and post patch rangers is huge imo. You may have run with some bad rangers, but thats the player, not the class. I’ve run with some terrible guardians but the class is great. I think we’re going to see an increase overall in the amount of solid rangers running around.