Guild Wars 2

What can i do to help a zerg?
What can I do to collect bags like most other classes do?

Im asking the whole WvW community, since Ranger forums just want to whine. I want to know, from other classes perspectives, what Could i be doing to improve how well i perform in a WvW situation, as a ranger?

AoE…AoE and some more AoE

There’s your water field in standoff, just don’t overwrite fire fields. You have a blast finisher now on your horn. Your LB 5 can be useful, as with your AoE fears. There’s probably other things too.

Running the piercing arrows trait (Marksmanship VIII) allows you to tag multiple enemies with each attack. Binding roots as well is a great way to tag enemies, but not only is it good for tagging, it’s a great immobolize skill that can help your team lock up them enemy for an easy kill. The same applies for muddy terrain as with binding roots. Healing spring is also a great support for the team. It may not be ground targeting like the ele water fields, however, it lasts 15 seconds and grants regen/removes conditions it’s entire duration. I personally run a tankier ranger so that I can get in with the melee if I want to, and when I do I usually drop that healing spring for the regen and blasts we can get from it. (save ele water fields for regroups). Pet’s are useless in even 15v15 type of play damage wise, so I recommend any pet that can give an aoe buff or condition, pretty much all you will get from a pet outside of roaming.
Rangers also have very high single target damage potential, people often forget about our pets, but I’ve watched as they tear up enemies with ease. We are also good at a harrasing type role, where we get behind the enemy and be a pain for the enemy ranged. You could run a bit more crit chance/damage and target enemy eles to take away their support.

Honestly, all this crying about ranger is mostly coming from players who have probably played it for 10 hours. I have over 2500+ hours played on my ranger, 80% of that played in wvw.I am far from useless. Apart from our pet, our utilities are fine and we can bring an extremely undervalued amount of support to the team.

People who main rangers often delude themselves into thinking they are being more useful than they really are because they barrage every 24-30 seconds and see some shiny numbers. Meanwhile people melee cleaving are contributing way more damage (and utility) and eles, mesmers, and necros are providing way more utility (and damage)

If you don’t care how useful you actually are and just want to follow a zerg and tag enemies, try greatsword/longbow with some semi-tanky gear and follow the melee train while occasionally barraging. Don’t listen to that crap about piercing arrows, it is much easier to just run in a circle spamming melee auto attacks with the rest of the zerglings.

@Blix Piercing arrows has no aoe cap, and tags a tad more than the 3 limited by melee. Again unless you are speaking from experience, you don’t know what you’re talking about, I didn’t even get into our unblockable traps that we can throw on the enemy zerg for aoe conditions and damage. Rangers have many use full utilities, but because very few people main them, they get little recognition.

warriorjrd.8695:

@Blix Piercing arrows has no aoe cap, and tags a tad more than the 3 limited by melee. Again unless you are speaking from experience, you don’t know what you’re talking about, I didn’t even get into our unblockable traps that we can throw on the enemy zerg for aoe conditions and damage. Rangers have many use full utilities, but because very few people main them, they get little recognition.

This is an MMO and Rangers are the second most numerous class in the game. If traps were even as remotely good as you’re making them out to be, more commanders would be requesting rangers to run them. Several of the traps are even bugged and only hit 3 targets.

Rangers are bottom tier. It’s a tough call to decide which is worse, Thieves or Rangers when it comes to overall WvW worth. Worse still is it appears ANet doesn’t even remember the class exists as no real progress has been made on the numerous issues of the class in a year.

As much as you may want to disagree, the easiest way to tell how valuable a class is, is to keep track of how many times a commander asks your class to fulfill a given role or for you to provide a role requested of a commander. I’ve never heard a request for Rangers to do anything but provide healing well… and even that is inferior to Ele water field.

Melee cleave has a much larger arc than an arrow does, you will tag more meleeing than trying to pew pew with a bow, with significantly less effort. You will also be marginally more useful. As I said though, ranger mains are delusional, so no point in arguing.

What comes to my mind when asked what a ranger can contribute to a zerg there are many things. You can’t do all at the same time but pick out what you like:

1) Longbow:
1500 range, piercing arrows is just decent to destroy siege, slow the enemy and with full zerker gear it even does good damage. You can pick out downed targets and finish them. With the knockback shot you can interrupt people who try to rez their mates and knockdown eles and others standing on a wall and trying to throw down the meteor shower on your team.
With stealth you can reposition yourself if someone wants to focus you.

2) AoE Immobilize
As a ranger you have many sources of AoE immobilize from which you can choose (if you want). Entangle, Spike trap if skilled, Muddy terrain and the Krytan hound but the dog is too squishy for zerg fights in my opinion
Immobilize is decent because stability won’t stop it. You might want to throw in for example a muddy terrain at the start of the fight to slow them down or in the back of a zerg to split them up so that your team has an easy time killing them.

3) Traps:
While I don’t use them they can be very useful because they are unblockable, tag many enemies and offer nice support. The freeze trap slows the enemy down considerably, spike trap immobilizes, fire trap does good direct damage with berserker stats + fire, poison trap weakens their healing

4) Healing spring: The best heal field in the game. Since rangers need that heal to self heal too I usually use it in the middle of a fight where it is not useless at all. It will remove conditions, grant regeneration and if you specc for it even vigor to up to 5 targets. People can use blast finshers or leaps/whirls in the field or you shoot projectile finishers through the field. A great skill

5) Pets
Well many will say pets are useless in a zerg. It depends really. If I am bunker specced with a tough pet I usually use the drakes. But there is another great option: Bears
There is one gerat benefit a ranger pet can offer. You know all these nasty AoE fields laying on the ground which hurt your zerg alot. You can send your pet through these fields for example by using guard or by sending it to a target behind the fields. The pet will activate them and if your pet eats too much damage you can simply switch it out.
The black bear offers 10+ seconds of AoE weakness, the polar bear offers AoE Chill for 3+ seconds and the brown bear takes one condition from up to 5 people.
The red moa offers about 50% fury uptime and can heal for 3400 if you manage to let it heal close to you.
With my longbow damage specc I use the black bear and the polar bear usually in zergs, sometimes the red moa. Even without any points in beastmastery they are really tough. Since bears don’t really deal damage I usually call them back once they did their job (F2, eating AoE fields)

7) Melee fighting
If you want to go melee the greatsword is just great. Auto-Evade in the autoattack gives you great survivability. Don’t use the block skill in the middle of a zerg because you might stand still for quite a bit while doing the knockback animation and that might be dangerous.
If you have a signet build (signets work also for the ranger) you can use signet of stone which grants you and your pet 6 seconds of direct damage immunity on a 80 (or 64 sec with -20%cd) CD and you can use Protect me for another 6 seconds direct damage immunity where your pet eats the damage. Thats another reason why I use bears, since they have enough hitpoints to make protect me really useful.
You might also want to use signet of the wild for 8 seconds of stability and/or rampage as one for another 20+ seconds of stability which is great when you dive into zergs.
If the ranger chooses to be melee he has really decent survivability. You could use melandru runes and lemongrass food to handle the conditions. With healing spring you should be fine and the 12 seconds of direct damage immunity make you really tough. But there has to be said that if you go full bunker or cleric your damage will be pretty bad. I haven’t tried it yet but I think with the 12 seconds of damage immunity you might even be able to use some damage equipment while going melee.
On the 2nd weapon set I would use horn which offers a blast finisher + fury and swiftness + 1 stack of might and axe or sword.

7) Support
With a natures voice specc you can offer 100% regen and switftness uptime and have a really tough pet by using guard all the time. While this is not godly it is pretty useful especially if you run a cleric build (or apothecary if you prefer conditions).
The Elite spirit is just awesome. The CD was reduced to 3 minutes this patch. You can use the elite spirit to rez up to 5 downed people or even dead NPC’s which is decent. You can also revive a dead keep lord if needed. On top of that it will heal for 480 per second for 60 seconds if it doesn’t die. In zerg fights it won’t live that long. But if it manages to survive as long you can revive twice in these 60 seconds since the revive skill has only 30 seconds CD.

And last but not least there is one more thing many people forget. There is an AoE cap of 5 targets for most skills. Your pet or spirit will save other people by eating damage for them. Every time the pet is one of these 5 targets one of your mates or you won’t be taking the damage. Thats a huge benefit and thats another reason why I use bears. They are really tough and will eat alot of damage for the zerg.

As you can see there are alot of ways how a ranger can be useful in a zerg. I hope you will have a good time playing ranger in WvW

AOE , finishers, and look for the weak glass classes.

I usually feel like Spotter is better than Piercing Arrows, am I wrong? Usually I’m running a fairly tanky build with around 35% crit chance. Spotter gives like a 8% boost not just to me, but my team as well.

Atherakhia.4086:

warriorjrd.8695:

@Blix Piercing arrows has no aoe cap, and tags a tad more than the 3 limited by melee. Again unless you are speaking from experience, you don’t know what you’re talking about, I didn’t even get into our unblockable traps that we can throw on the enemy zerg for aoe conditions and damage. Rangers have many use full utilities, but because very few people main them, they get little recognition.

This is an MMO and Rangers are the second most numerous class in the game. If traps were even as remotely good as you’re making them out to be, more commanders would be requesting rangers to run them. Several of the traps are even bugged and only hit 3 targets.

Rangers are bottom tier. It’s a tough call to decide which is worse, Thieves or Rangers when it comes to overall WvW worth. Worse still is it appears ANet doesn’t even remember the class exists as no real progress has been made on the numerous issues of the class in a year.

As much as you may want to disagree, the easiest way to tell how valuable a class is, is to keep track of how many times a commander asks your class to fulfill a given role or for you to provide a role requested of a commander. I’ve never heard a request for Rangers to do anything but provide healing well… and even that is inferior to Ele water field.

If you think for a second that Ranger are second most played (not created) you’re fooling yourself. Rangers were heavily botted and that’s the only reason they are second most made profession. Commander don’t know what rangers can do, sure we may not excel at anything in particular, but we can play many roles, and have plenty of support capabilities. The current meta for wvw excludes any medium armour in general, not just rangers, but the smaller you get, the more you will want those medium armour classes