Guild Wars 2

I don’t often post on the forums. I am a regular multi-classer with no true main. I often watch the vods of the tournaments and admire some of the plays that are pulled out by top teams (more often EU than in NA). One of the things I enjoy doing is thinking of the strategies these teams use and theorycraft other team compositions that could work. Most of the time, I can always think of a couple team comps for every profession with a variety of builds that might work if teams took the time to play the game a little differently. Traditionally the two classes that people seem to often put down is necromancer and ranger. In all my theorycrafting, every class always seems to find somewhere it can fit in the current meta.

Guardian: Great support (good skills, good range, decent CC) or great damage (medi/kinda burn guard).

Mesmer: Great utility (mass invis, moa, CC, boon rip, PORTAL) or now… I’ve seen some people attempting support mesmer (and remember an NA tourney where a support mesmer did quite well, even won? was that a 2 v 2 tourney? I don’t quite remember) but having looked at the traits it looks like it could be very strong.

Warrior: Good support (shouts, banner, CC) or good damage (RAMPAGE).

Elementalist: Good everything. This class is kind of the master of all trades.

Engineer: Jack of all trades, great damage dealer and cleave. Now… engis are kind of hurting but with good positioning I can still see them being just as valuable to a team because of all the utility their skills offer.

Thief: Great dps (stealth and damage) and great utility with all the stealth availability for teammates.

Necromancer: Although this class can be focused down they can be quite tanky (especially with plague) and they can do a suprising amount of damage still. This is one of those classes where they can be on the defensive one moment and then just turn the fight around with 1 fear and take you out. The Abjured makes a good show of how strong this class can be.

Ranger: Jack of all trades (like engi and ele) yet also the worst at everything… Rangers were in the meta when eles weren’t… now eles are quite strong and ranger support builds have been nerfed entirely. This leaves rangers with their old school homepoint? Maybe they go DPS? Yet no matter how I think about it, there is never a reason or a team comp that I couldn’t just replace the ranger for something better.

TL;DR:
Having thought of a lot of potential team comps, in the current iteration of balance, I can’t seem to find any reason to take a ranger in ANY comp. Has anyone else thought of anything?

If a game mode ever appears where 1v1s (true 1v1s, not conquest) or solo play is suddenly important, or probably even just a long-range map, rangers will immediately be the most cried about class.

Until then it looks like they’re going to continue trading team support for self support, which will forever keep them weak in team-based games.

We’d like to keep it that way until Rangers can be more than 11111111Entangle!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

ellesee.8297:

We’d like to keep it that way until Rangers can be more than 11111111Entangle!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

Try your 1 1 1 and Entangle and see if you can ever kill an Ele…

This self-proclaimed #1 Engi really knows his stuffs lol..

Ele = Jack of all trade, Master of all (offense, defense, CC, sustain, control, support, mobility all in one build)

Ranger = Jack of all trades , Master of None. (Weapons have no support. Sustain depending on utilities so it’s limited, mobility depend on weapon and utility. Even if you make choices and focus on one aspect, Ele still out-perform you in every aspects)

Also I’m quite sick of seeing people claiming Ele or Engi “need more skills to play” lol..
Clicking more bottoms =/= hard to play. It takes about 30 minutes to learn the rotation if you’re already a veteran player of this game and know the concept. (and know how to set hot-keys)

Also, Anet never nerf Ele for more than 2 years, while constantly nerfing Ranger no end.

Responding to Black Truth:

Try these tricks on any decent ele and see if it’d work. One bottom to swap to earth will immune all crit, proc protection, and -% damage. Procing a fire aura from earth combo will also trigger protection, get hit while in earth also trigger protection, making your so called “burst every 8 seconds” reduced the damage by at least 70%. Guess what, the CD that Ele swap back to Earth is also only 8.5 second!

There’re reasons Abjure never take a ranger. It doesn’t worth it. There’re also reasons why every high level teams run 1~2 Ele and a Mesmer. The only “TRUTH” is ranger is UP PROVEN BY NUMEROUS DATA AND COMPETITIVE SCENE. Your “OPINION” means nothing.

Toxsa.2701:

Try your 1 1 1 and Entangle and see if you can ever kill an Ele…

This self-proclaimed #1 Engi really knows his stuffs lol..

Ele = Jack of all trade, Master of all (offense, defense, CC, sustain, control, support all in one build)

Ranger = Jack of all trades , Master of None.

Also I’m quite sick of seeing people claiming Ele or Engi “need more skills to play” lol..
Clicking more bottoms =/= hard to play.

That’s the main problem I come up against. Of course I could shove a ranger into anywhere and it could do OK, which has often been the case. Now, it is a different story as wherever you shove this “jack of all trades” class you could just shove any other and they could ALL do it better. Even for stronghold, I don’t see a role for this class.

The sad part is, Engi and Ele DOES take more skill to play. But not by much at least compared to Ele.

Why you ask? Ranger just baits dodges the easiest cause of permanent AI/taunt/traps/binding roots. Chain CC taunt trap ranger can work, people just need burst to back it up on top if it’s ridiculous condi cleave tbh.

And rangers just need to stop saying “RANGER SO UP QQ, I DONT WANNA LEARN HOW TO COUNT DODGES.”

BlackTruth.6813:

The sad part is, Engi and Ele DOES take more skill to play. But not by much at least compared to Ele.

Why you ask? Ranger just baits dodges the easiest cause of permanent AI/taunt/traps/binding roots. Chain CC taunt trap ranger can work, people just need burst to back it up on top if it’s ridiculous condi cleave tbh.

And rangers just need to stop saying “RANGER SO UP QQ, I DONT WANNA LEARN HOW TO COUNT DODGES.”

Care to elaborate? How is that proposed ranger build viable? What do you expect the ranger to do once their dodges are gone?

I feel engies are less viable than rangers right now. maybe even necros, unless youre pro at the signet cele build.

Toxsa.2701:

ellesee.8297:

We’d like to keep it that way until Rangers can be more than 11111111Entangle!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

Try your 1 1 1 and Entangle and see if you can ever kill an Ele…

This self-proclaimed #1 Engi really knows his stuffs lol..

Also I’m quite sick of seeing people claiming Ele or Engi “need more skills to play” lol..
Clicking more bottoms =/= hard to play. It takes about 30 minutes to learn the rotation if you’re already a veteran player of this game and know the concept. (and know how to set hot-keys)

Also, Anet never nerf Ele for more than 2 years, while constantly nerfing Ranger no end.

Pressing 1 doesn’t take skill.

Pressing 1 and 2 doesn’t take a skill.

So yeah, I’m sorry to bring you these new, but rangers are not hard to play at all.

They did nerf ele.

Laraley.7695:

Toxsa.2701:

ellesee.8297:

We’d like to keep it that way until Rangers can be more than 11111111Entangle!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

Try your 1 1 1 and Entangle and see if you can ever kill an Ele…

This self-proclaimed #1 Engi really knows his stuffs lol..

Also I’m quite sick of seeing people claiming Ele or Engi “need more skills to play” lol..
Clicking more bottoms =/= hard to play. It takes about 30 minutes to learn the rotation if you’re already a veteran player of this game and know the concept. (and know how to set hot-keys)

Also, Anet never nerf Ele for more than 2 years, while constantly nerfing Ranger no end.

Pressing 1 doesn’t take skill.

Pressing 1 and 2 doesn’t take a skill.

So yeah, I’m sorry to bring you these new, but rangers are not hard to play at all.

They did nerf ele.

Rabbid ranger does less condition damage than Celestial ele explain the logic plz.
Spirits take 2 seconds to cast and 4 seconds to activate and on top of that have crappy effects.
Traps are like dead since you can’t launch them anymore and the amount of condition they pulse is funny at best, their sole purpose is the combo field .. I guess
Why dyou expect rangers to play anything else than longbow with this state of balance?
Piercing arrows actually reward skill, through active positioning, not pressing 1-2-3-4-5 asap like eles like to do lol.
Greatsword is a great model of how melee weapons should be in this game, reacting quickly and appropriately without much room for mystake. It’s fun and rewarding but once again underpowered.

1st I’m addressing Toxsa:
1) While engi itself is fairly balanced at this point, many other classes (except ranger due to the design of the class being spam focused) still have things about them that are too strong making the engi a less optimal choice than, say, a Mesmer. (Abjured is not a reason to say engi is viable, chaith plays exclusively engi and therefore continues to MAKE IT WORK, does not mean it’s optimal) so yes, engi takes more skill to play than most other classes and that’s due to the fact that is 100% about landing certain skills and comboing off of them effectively. And it’s lack of constant stunbreaks and condi removal make it a higher risk class to play but a more rewarding one when you pull it off
2) The whole 1111 entangle thing is actually a build. It’s called rabid condi sb ranger and it’s quite popular in pug games (again doesn’t mean it’s competitive material but balance in a pug game is much different than balance in a competitive game)
3) Ranger is UP and will continue to be UP until they change the way the class deals damage. What I mean by that is if you look at the way ranger builds play, most of them rely on spamming some sort of skill to do their damage. Ex. RF is the LB ranger’s source of damage and therefore they get their damage from spamming it, While it may be effective in a pug game where people don’t always pay attention it almost can’t be viable in a competitive scene due to it being a 1 trick pony. Once you learn to counter it, the ranger becomes useless. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like anet intends to change the class in a way to make it more combo focused like every other class and less about using certain skills every time they come off CD. So I’m not sure if Ranger will ever be an OPTIMAL choice for pvp unless the design of the class and the way it’s played is changed.

Now I’ll address the op’s post:
I think there could be some comps where LB ranger could be used effectively. They may not be the most optimal comps but they could possibly work.
The comp would consist of a Mesmer, Power Engi (or thief if you decide you need the extra mobility), and LB ranger as the dps focused members. All 3 excel at long ranged damage and bursting out single targets very quickly. Ranger could use taunt to cc a person followed by Mesmer stun and then burst. Ranger could also provide lots of immob on targets using entangle and muddy terrain giving the whole team great opportunities to burst. Combo that with a Mesmer stun and you can pretty much guarantee any kill from long range. Less opportunity for your team’s dps characters to get bursted out which gives you more breathing room in terms of moving people to contest other points. Mesmer can handle back capping along with the power engi (or thief if you choose to swap engi with thief) Other members would consist of a bunker guard and a d/d ele to cover team support and overall tankiness. What do you think of that? Is there a flaw you see that you’d like to discuss cause I just made this up so I haven’t had a ton of time to look for flaws and such. I just wanted to contribute

Ario.8964:

… except ranger due to the design of the class being spam focused … look at the way ranger builds play, most of them rely on spamming some sort of skill to do their damage.

Longbow isn’t the only weapon rangers have and for your info rapid fire isn’t the main source of damage for power longbow builds, it’s actually the autoattack. (RF does only about 20% more damage than autoattacking, it hits quickler but smaller hits)
Longbow is the only weapon viable at the moment cos everything else sucks pretty much.

@Revan, that’s why it’s called an EXAMPLE. If I were to list out every single thing that rangers spam to do damage it’d be an unnecessarily large wall of text nobody would bother to read. Also, as longbow is the most popular weapon for ranger currently in pvp, it is the most relevant to use as an example. And to clarify what I meant because based on your reaction I didn’t word it very well in my first post:
RF is the main source of longbow BURST damage. Sustained damage is the auto yes, but when a ranger bursts they don’t sit on their auto attack for longbow, they use rapid fire because there’s a higher dps output from the skill than the auto attack.

The point still remains that ranger is a spam focused class which is their main obstacle when it comes to balance. That’s what the part you quoted was for so I’m not sure why you chose that specific part of my post because it has absolutely nothing to do with your argument.

Ario.8964:

1st I’m addressing Toxsa:
1) While engi itself is fairly balanced at this point, many other classes (except ranger due to the design of the class being spam focused) still have things about them that are too strong making the engi a less optimal choice than, say, a Mesmer. (Abjured is not a reason to say engi is viable, chaith plays exclusively engi and therefore continues to MAKE IT WORK, does not mean it’s optimal) so yes, engi takes more skill to play than most other classes and that’s due to the fact that is 100% about landing certain skills and comboing off of them effectively. And it’s lack of constant stunbreaks and condi removal make it a higher risk class to play but a more rewarding one when you pull it off
2) The whole 1111 entangle thing is actually a build. It’s called rabid condi sb ranger and it’s quite popular in pug games (again doesn’t mean it’s competitive material but balance in a pug game is much different than balance in a competitive game)
3) Ranger is UP and will continue to be UP until they change the way the class deals damage. What I mean by that is if you look at the way ranger builds play, most of them rely on spamming some sort of skill to do their damage. Ex. RF is the LB ranger’s source of damage and therefore they get their damage from spamming it, While it may be effective in a pug game where people don’t always pay attention it almost can’t be viable in a competitive scene due to it being a 1 trick pony. Once you learn to counter it, the ranger becomes useless. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like anet intends to change the class in a way to make it more combo focused like every other class and less about using certain skills every time they come off CD. So I’m not sure if Ranger will ever be an OPTIMAL choice for pvp unless the design of the class and the way it’s played is changed.

You’re making it more complicated than it actually is.

The reality is simple, Ele have more weapon skills, their weapon skills are more versatile, including offense, defense, CC, healing, support all in one build, while many other professions have those selfish weapons that either only do damage, or provide very little utility value. Many of those selfish weapons also have those “filler skills” that are outright useless or inferior than Ele’s overall weapon package.

The 2nd reality is Ele traits, both major and minor, usually do more things than most of the professions. I’ll give you some examples:
1. Just looking at earth, you got those awesome minor traits that directly reduce damage, cause cripple when swap. Major trait is more powerful, you got more protection from aura proc, -33% earth cd and -soft cc duration, and immune to crit when on Earth. All of them have great impacts in battle.
2. Look at Arcane, you got some most powerful traits in minor trait. Basically free fury, protection, swiftness, regen on swap. For major, you got some extremely impactful trait like evasive arcane, passive boon proc when taking contingency, as well as perma vigor.
3. Looking at water.. That soothing ice is one of the most disgusting things out there when combine with Earth trait.. Passive protection, regen and auto chill by JUST BEING HIT is outright ridiculous. The other healing combination just make things worse. After Ele passively sustain the first burst, they can do their regular rotation and gain more permanent sustain.
4. Now look at ranger’s Marksmanship. Their minor traits are fill with 3 traits that’re worthless if you don’t pick a GM trait to support it. Those 3 traits basically do the same thing, yet Anet feel like breaking them into 3. If you want to get piercing and -cd on LB, you basically waste 3 minor traits because then opening strike will be useless.
They also have one of the more hard-to-achieve damage modifier lies there. The entire line except the GM trait feels very lacking.

I play all professions, and pay attention to all of them, so I know why some classes are inferior and some are superior. The only thing I don’t understand is why Anet want to keep on nerfing the inferior classes. They usually buff little things on those classes, and then nerf the rest of it to “compensate the buffs”. They didn’t do that to the superior Meta classes like Ele.

Theoretically the Ranger can be a nasty foe, but in practice 90% of them run in blind longbowpewpewentangle mode and are likely to make their team loose. I have seen a Ranger stand for a minute and pewpew me from max range while I hold the point, wondering just wtf he’s trying to do. The ones that know how to go melee and at least try to decap are far more dangerous foes.

Simply put, they dont generally fit the gameplay mode. If dueling won matches, sure they would be decent. It doesnt. Melee brawls on points win matches. When we know that, we bring better classes. If we really want range, we bring more utility and burst, such as a Mesmer.

Ranger class is so far behind it’s a joke. The class doesn’t even have single viable build anymore.

Conditions got completely trashed into the ground. Some reason we got worse this patch with our condition builds.

Power the damage output is less and it’s rather funny our survival doesn’t feel any better then used to be.

We have less condition remove options than before.

Everything seems to be bugged.

No Mobility outside of combat.

Lackluster traits, to many traits that require us to be at 50% health.

Traps are actually very good.

It is the same old problem of bringing nothing unique to the table and lacking free (group) teleports of mesmer and thief that are instant. They give mesmer and thief like the same damage/fighting potential with 5x more mobility.

To become good ranger needs something unique. Personally I thought taunt of the pet was rather good. Wouldn’t mind a 25 seconds cooldown if it gets an indicator icon to see when it is up and if it stays unblockable. Also slight range increase please.

Last but not least a skill that for example swaps our position with the pet woul be awesome and needed utility. Doesn’t have to be instant if they are against real teleports for ranger class. Can be a short channel or something.

IMHO, there’s 1 reason to take a ranger into the team; traps.

1) They are a strong counter to stealth-openers
2) If you lay traps on key-points on the map, they give you indication of where the opposing team is, since the ranger can see the condition-ticks, even if they happen far away. This also works against stealth-movement.
3) Traps are a good counter to portals (if the mesmer doesn’t use temporal enchanter that is).
4) Traps offer all around very high AoE condition-DPS and CC, especially the spike trap, so they aren’t completely useless in burst-comps.
5) They can be used both offensively and defensively, for example either to burst the person on the node, or in your backline, to launch and dish out tons of DMG to thiefs or other Melee’s that wanna get onto your squishier targets.

I currently use this build as a defensive roamer (yes, the condition-DMG looks low, but I’ve noticed that I don’t feel like I do too little DMG at all, but cele-amu gives me healing-power and vita that I can use and the Shortbow actually uses power/ferocity quite well).
Also, if you switch to sword/dagger and dodge, it really increases the DPS of the traps to a very acceptable amount, even with a rather low amount of condition-DMG.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAV8YjMqQ5K2uCusAVLGcEq+bj1KgDgJvy9O/DG9SG1SA-TZRFwANuIAAeAAx3fIxRA4ZZAA

If you have enough swiftness on your team, you can also use Krait-runes and if you have some chars that can AoE-mightstack etc. the build actually gets really strong in teamfights.
The build is also pretty decent in 1v1’s.
You can also use rabid amu, but I feel like the vita is a bit low and you loose a lot of sustain.

Laraley.7695:

Toxsa.2701:

ellesee.8297:

We’d like to keep it that way until Rangers can be more than 11111111Entangle!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

Try your 1 1 1 and Entangle and see if you can ever kill an Ele…

This self-proclaimed #1 Engi really knows his stuffs lol..

Also I’m quite sick of seeing people claiming Ele or Engi “need more skills to play” lol..
Clicking more bottoms =/= hard to play. It takes about 30 minutes to learn the rotation if you’re already a veteran player of this game and know the concept. (and know how to set hot-keys)

Also, Anet never nerf Ele for more than 2 years, while constantly nerfing Ranger no end.

Pressing 1 doesn’t take skill.

Pressing 1 and 2 doesn’t take a skill.

So yeah, I’m sorry to bring you these new, but rangers are not hard to play at all.

They did nerf ele.

Playing Ranger isn’t about pressing 1 and 2, but:
→ Managing kittened Pet.
→ Proper baiting dodge, since “2” aka Rapid Fire is the easiest skill to dodge in whole game.
→ Proper chaining CCs.
→ Proper dodging and using Signet to mitigate possible burst, since Ranger is squishy as kitten.
→ Switching weapons, since LB is kitten against anyone who has clues and can break distance.

PowerBottom.5796:

IMHO, there’s 1 reason to take a ranger into the team; traps.

1) They are a strong counter to stealth-openers
2) If you lay traps on key-points on the map, they give you indication of where the opposing team is, since the ranger can see the condition-ticks, even if they happen far away. This also works against stealth-movement.
3) Traps are a good counter to portals (if the mesmer doesn’t use temporal enchanter that is).
4) Traps offer all around very high AoE condition-DPS and CC, especially the spike trap, so they aren’t completely useless in burst-comps.
5) They can be used both offensively and defensively, for example either to burst the person on the node, or in your backline, to launch and dish out tons of DMG to thiefs or other Melee’s that wanna get onto your squishier targets.

I currently use this build as a defensive roamer (yes, the condition-DMG looks low, but I’ve noticed that I don’t feel like I do too little DMG at all, but cele-amu gives me healing-power and vita that I can use and the Shortbow actually uses power/ferocity quite well).
Also, if you switch to sword/dagger and dodge, it really increases the DPS of the traps to a very acceptable amount, even with a rather low amount of condition-DMG.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAV8YjMqQ5K2uCusAVLGcEq+bj1KgDgJvy9O/DG9SG1SA-TZRFwANuIAAeAAx3fIxRA4ZZAA

If you have enough swiftness on your team, you can also use Krait-runes and if you have some chars that can AoE-mightstack etc. the build actually gets really strong in teamfights.
The build is also pretty decent in 1v1’s.
You can also use rabid amu, but I feel like the vita is a bit low and you loose a lot of sustain.

For the trap argument to work multi traps would have to be a thing imo. Maybe if a trait allowed to place 2 at a time but guess stacking 2 on each other would be kind of strong.

Dojo.1867:

PowerBottom.5796:

IMHO, there’s 1 reason to take a ranger into the team; traps.

1) They are a strong counter to stealth-openers
2) If you lay traps on key-points on the map, they give you indication of where the opposing team is, since the ranger can see the condition-ticks, even if they happen far away. This also works against stealth-movement.
3) Traps are a good counter to portals (if the mesmer doesn’t use temporal enchanter that is).
4) Traps offer all around very high AoE condition-DPS and CC, especially the spike trap, so they aren’t completely useless in burst-comps.
5) They can be used both offensively and defensively, for example either to burst the person on the node, or in your backline, to launch and dish out tons of DMG to thiefs or other Melee’s that wanna get onto your squishier targets.

I currently use this build as a defensive roamer (yes, the condition-DMG looks low, but I’ve noticed that I don’t feel like I do too little DMG at all, but cele-amu gives me healing-power and vita that I can use and the Shortbow actually uses power/ferocity quite well).
Also, if you switch to sword/dagger and dodge, it really increases the DPS of the traps to a very acceptable amount, even with a rather low amount of condition-DMG.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAV8YjMqQ5K2uCusAVLGcEq+bj1KgDgJvy9O/DG9SG1SA-TZRFwANuIAAeAAx3fIxRA4ZZAA

If you have enough swiftness on your team, you can also use Krait-runes and if you have some chars that can AoE-mightstack etc. the build actually gets really strong in teamfights.
The build is also pretty decent in 1v1’s.
You can also use rabid amu, but I feel like the vita is a bit low and you loose a lot of sustain.

For the trap argument to work multi traps would have to be a thing imo. Maybe if a trait allowed to place 2 at a time but guess stacking 2 on each other would be kind of strong.

Laying the same Trap multiple times would be insanely strong IMHO.

But against stealth-openers or melees, just knocking them down and inflicting quite a bit of bleeding/burning/cripple is pretty good. It just turns the initiation on it’s head and suddenly they go from hunter to prey. ^^’

Yes, it doesn’t magically negate stealth-openers and you still need to have good map-awareness and have enough ppl on the point of initiation to capitalize on the CC and DPS, but it’s IMHO one of the best ways to deal with it.

Another good way are Marks, but they are not invisible, so they need to be spread out to not all get triggered by one dodge; therefore, the burst of DPS and CC is much lower.

I’m excited to try out the trapper build in Stronghold, I think it’s much stronger there and you can play it a bit differently (no shortbow needed, because it’s much more open, so you don’t need any precision and you can easily go settlers amu and axe/dagger+sword/torch).

Toxsa, I believe we are on the same page. I agree 100% that ele is over the top now hopefully when anet starts shaving classes that are op like they’d hoped to be doing here soon then we will see them brought more in line.

Main purpose of my argument towards you was to argue engi takes quite a bit of skill and since it appears you aren’t arguing against it I’m completely on board with the ele is op and is too easy to play train.

Ario.8964:

@Revan, that’s why it’s called an EXAMPLE. If I were to list out every single thing that rangers spam to do damage it’d be an unnecessarily large wall of text nobody would bother to read. Also, as longbow is the most popular weapon for ranger currently in pvp, it is the most relevant to use as an example. And to clarify what I meant because based on your reaction I didn’t word it very well in my first post:
RF is the main source of longbow BURST damage. Sustained damage is the auto yes, but when a ranger bursts they don’t sit on their auto attack for longbow, they use rapid fire because there’s a higher dps output from the skill than the auto attack.

The point still remains that ranger is a spam focused class which is their main obstacle when it comes to balance. That’s what the part you quoted was for so I’m not sure why you chose that specific part of my post because it has absolutely nothing to do with your argument.

No your point is not valid, ranger isnt spam based longbow is.

How many direct and indirect Ranger threads does it take for ArenaNet to actually care?

Answer: undefined.

YOU GUYS ARE kittenED

Traps are actually very good.

Lol how
Flame trap does 3 stack of burn
Spike trap does 1sec of knockdown for 45 sec cooldown
The other 2 are outright crap.

Try to play a trap ranger and see how much dmg you’ll actually do before saying such BS

Let’s list then, shall we?
Lb= RF spam (power)
Sb= 1 spam (condi)
Sword= 1 spam with the evades thrown in when necessary (either one)
Axe= 2 spam (condi)
Greatsword= 2 spam (power)
Not listing offhands because they have nothing to do with this.

All of these for the respective builds you use them in are spammed pretty much off cooldown to maximize damage done by the build. It’s simple, I’m not saying ranger players are mindless spammers, I’m saying that the way ranger maximizes damage is the exact reason that they will not be able to be competitive until changes are made to the design of the class and it’s weapons.

Part of it is due to a little thing we all know as a skill ceiling. Due to ranger being spam focused the skill ceiling is significantly lower than that of an engineer, thief, or Mesmer which is why it doesn’t have much of a place in competitive teams. The skill ceiling is not very high for the ranger due to the fact that they are not combo based and because they are limited in what they can do, it’s quite easy to outplay them after you figure out what they are running. Ranger has more limits than almost if not every other class in this game by design. Until that is changed ranger will continue to be bottom tier.

Edit: I welcome all discussions and arguments but please give a better argument than “no” as that is not constructive in any way shape or form. Thanks for your time

Ario.8964:

Let’s list then, shall we?
Lb= RF spam (power)
Sb= 1 spam (condi)
Sword= 1 spam with the evades thrown in when necessary (either one)
Axe= 2 spam (condi)
Greatsword= 2 spam (power)
Not listing offhands because they have nothing to do with this.

All of these for the respective builds you use them in are spammed pretty much off cooldown to maximize damage done by the build. It’s simple, I’m not saying ranger players are mindless spammers, I’m saying that the way ranger maximizes damage is the exact reason that they will not be able to be competitive until changes are made to the design of the class and it’s weapons.

Part of it is due to a little thing we all know as a skill ceiling. Due to ranger being spam focused the skill ceiling is significantly lower than that of an engineer, thief, or Mesmer which is why it doesn’t have much of a place in competitive teams. The skill ceiling is not very high for the ranger due to the fact that they are not combo based and because they are limited in what they can do, it’s quite easy to outplay them after you figure out what they are running. Ranger has more limits than almost if not every other class in this game by design. Until that is changed ranger will continue to be bottom tier.

Edit: I welcome all discussions and arguments but please give a better argument than “no” as that is not constructive in any way shape or form. Thanks for your time

I wrote a whole whole paragraph to explain why ranger are sub-par, not because of those spam reason you mentioned… Talking about spam, I find Ele spamming auto on blank space to gain health proc is much more spammable, yet rewarding…

Anyway, LB is not hard to use, but if you really want to beat any decent player, you must utilize 3 4 quite well.

SB has almost 0 damage on their 2 3 4 5, what do you expect them to do? This is just a straight out inferior package of weapon, what do you expect? Still the main damage 1 is lower than most of the weapons now due to low damage coefficient and higher base stats.

Sword is a really hard weapon to use due to auto-chain lock… It is actually a much harder to use weapon than those Ele’s weapons… Also by using evade properly to survive you call that a spam weapon? Anyway, my point is even though it auto-lock you, the damage is not any higher than D/D’s combo at all, while putting you in danger.

GS spam weapon you kidding me? Maul, like any other melee attacks, need precise timing to land. 3 swoop is a movement skill. Auto attack is crap and you should avoid it unless everything on CD. 4 is a strategic block that you have to make distance so the block doesn’t expire. 5 is a very very hard to land interrupt. (extremely slow cast, extremely short distance..)

Axe:
Another inferior package of weapon skills… Auto 1 spam very low dps. 2 need to stay a point black range for it to be effective, it’s not spammable. 3 is a simple chill with long cd.

Honestly I think D/D ele is more of a spam classes because you need to smash those bottoms to do combo quickly, spam auto for heal. They press more bottoms, but doesn’t mean it’s not a spamming classes..

I have had good success with a marauder/traveler 00666 build but I am quite certain that there are much stronger builds for other classes at the top level.

But, it is quite hard to judge ranger in the current environment where Mesmer can instant kill you, Celementalists are far stronger then they were and burning is a bit OTT.

Aside from bugs and some rather silly design choices, as far as build variety goes Ranger is in a much better place then it used to be. Mandatory traits like RtW and EE are baseline now. We were given a solid boost to sustain and burst mitigation.

The problem is some classes got multiple stacking boosts where they should have gotten none. Mesmers/Eles I am looking at you

Ario.8964:

Let’s list then, shall we?
Lb= RF spam (power)
Sb= 1 spam (condi)
Sword= 1 spam with the evades thrown in when necessary (either one)
Axe= 2 spam (condi)
Greatsword= 2 spam (power)
Not listing offhands because they have nothing to do with this.

All of these for the respective builds you use them in are spammed pretty much off cooldown to maximize damage done by the build. It’s simple, I’m not saying ranger players are mindless spammers, I’m saying that the way ranger maximizes damage is the exact reason that they will not be able to be competitive until changes are made to the design of the class and it’s weapons.

Part of it is due to a little thing we all know as a skill ceiling. Due to ranger being spam focused the skill ceiling is significantly lower than that of an engineer, thief, or Mesmer which is why it doesn’t have much of a place in competitive teams. The skill ceiling is not very high for the ranger due to the fact that they are not combo based and because they are limited in what they can do, it’s quite easy to outplay them after you figure out what they are running. Ranger has more limits than almost if not every other class in this game by design. Until that is changed ranger will continue to be bottom tier.

Edit: I welcome all discussions and arguments but please give a better argument than “no” as that is not constructive in any way shape or form. Thanks for your time

Just no. Ranger Weapons aren’t spam, you don’t repeat the same action at all not more than any class with autoattack…
Is battlefield a spam game because you fire a rifle?
I can see for the longbow. Where you get most of your damage through the use of autoattack but even then the dmg is based on range, piercing arrow combined with point blanck all that isn’t spam.

Maybe you don’t know what spam is look it up on wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_

and stop leaving kittened comments like these trying to prove youre right like a nice little kitten that knows nothing about the class.

Toxsa, we have already established on multiple occasions that ele is spammy and op but that’s because of something completely different than ranger. Now I will admit GS I was wrong but I still feel there is a valid point in all this. Partially as you said a good potion of the weapons are terribly designed and therefore must use a certain skill as much as possible to make the weapon set useful in a build. If they redesign some of the skills on the weapons to give them more utility and higher damage coefficients on a majority of the skills then they are on their way to making ranger viable. But again, until they do that rangers DAMAGE will come from a few skills placed on each weapon set. Now playing effectively with a set like lb/gs will require you, as you said, to use the rest of your skills effectively but your burst damage will come from maybe 2 or 3 skills within both weapon sets combined. Also, given that ranger doesn’t have high amounts of knockbacks like engi or stuns like thief and Mesmer, the comboing ability is not very big on the ranger outside of 2 very small cc skills, doesn’t really allow for much other than the 2 skill combos on each of those weapons. Because of a lack of high combo ability on the class they are forced to get their burst from those 2 or 3 skills alone. Sounds like damage comes from spam to me but hey, we may have two different lines for what is defined as spam in skills. (well, other than d/d ele which is the king of spam)

Revan, you still have yet to make an actual argument aside from name calling and posting random kitten. Battlefield… Seriously? If you’re going to make a post at least don’t make a stupid and pointless comparison and then berate others for what they say. So please, get good or go away. Bye!

Ever heard of the rangers class mechanic? It is called “pet” and actually requires a lot of micromanagement to get the most out of it. It can offer cc, burst, support, etc. There is your “comboing ability” …

RevanCorana.8942:

YOU GUYS ARE kittenED

Traps are actually very good.

Lol how
Flame trap does 3 stack of burn
Spike trap does 1sec of knockdown for 45 sec cooldown
The other 2 are outright crap.

Try to play a trap ranger and see how much dmg you’ll actually do before saying such BS

Honestly you’re wrong. Traps (flame/spike) are very strong with the right build for 1v1, 2v2 fights. The weakness of that build isn’t the lack of strength of the traps, but the lack of mobility and survival, because to use traps rangers give up their utilities, so they have limited condi cleanse, no stability, one stunbreak, no mobility. If anything they could use higher trap range and lower spike trap cd (24s traited – 30 untraited).
The build also brings rangers inherently weakness with it, like the lack of team support, being useless in a fight with more than 2 enemies. So yeah, you’re one of the strongest 1v1 duelers, but don’t have any advantage to an ele, that can do that too while being a lot more versatile.

I was comparing autoattack in gw2 with left clicking in a FPS.
That’s what you call spam if you don’t get the comparison or how nonsensical this statement you are is get lost.

apocalypso.4895:

RevanCorana.8942:

YOU GUYS ARE kittenED

Traps are actually very good.

Lol how
Flame trap does 3 stack of burn
Spike trap does 1sec of knockdown for 45 sec cooldown
The other 2 are outright crap.

Try to play a trap ranger and see how much dmg you’ll actually do before saying such BS

Honestly you’re wrong. Traps (flame/spike) are very strong with the right build for 1v1, 2v2 fights. The weakness of that build isn’t the lack of strength of the traps, but the lack of mobility and survival, because to use traps rangers give up their utilities, so they have limited condi cleanse, no stability, one stunbreak, no mobility. If anything they could use higher trap range and lower spike trap cd (24s traited – 30 untraited).
The build also brings rangers inherently weakness with it, like the lack of team support, being useless in a fight with more than 2 enemies. So yeah, you’re one of the strongest 1v1 duelers, but don’t have any advantage to an ele, that can do that too while being a lot more versatile.

Honesntly no-one can beat a well played D/D Ele 1 on 1 in this game right now if they played right. Condition ranger included. So if you can’t beat a D/D ele, how can you be the strongest? And it’s not like these Ele are only good at dueling, hell, they’re extremely good in team fight too! Why bring an inferior 1 on 1 class that’re also way inferior in team fight, when you can bring a class that can do good at both at the same time?

Also like you mentioned, if you play condition and no traps, your condition application is just mediocre at best, but if you do bring traps, you would have minimal cleanse, stun-break, and survival measures. (also they destroyed off-hand torch, so bringing that wouldn’t help too.) All I can see that a condition ranger is good at is killing some of those zerkers I guess, but honestly, ANYONE can kill those zerkers if you out-played them. (And yeah, it’s very difficult to outplayed the current Mesmer due to the lack of counter-play) They’re not like God-Mode Ele who’re virtually invincible in 1 on 1.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

Ever heard of the rangers class mechanic? It is called “pet” and actually requires a lot of micromanagement to get the most out of it. It can offer cc, burst, support, etc. There is your “comboing ability” …

Our “class mechanic” that you speak of is a terrible design. I mean, our pets have 4 skills, right? But we can only control 1. Such greatness and OP’ness. Lets not forget that our “class mechanic” can become “no mechanic” when the pet dies. Imagine a Mesmer without there F1-F4’s for 45 seconds. Or an Engi without their F1-F5’s for 45 seconds.

I was wrong about frost trap it’s actually probably the best of all 4