Guild Wars 2

Lately I have heard a lot of how bad rangers are in WvW with some very good points to back that statement with (no efficient condition removing, no burst damage, no AoE attacks, pets getting slaughtered with AoE and just overall bad everything.) So I decided to ask the WvW experts that (should hopefully) roam this forum section:

how do you think rangers fare in wvw, roaming or otherwise?

Depends, I see rangers excel at 1v1, roaming, patrols, etc. However, they are very luckluster in large group situations. They bring a water field, blast finisher, binding roots and some good AOE up on walls or down the walls when needed.

However, they suffer a lot in full groups:
Lack of CC – cause what is 1 binding roots vs a hammer warrior’s cc ?
Pet problems – not ranger exclusive, minion necros and phantasm mesmers have same problems, add to that the lack of pet AI in this game.
Lack of stability
Lack of stun breakers
Lack of group utility – what can a ranger provide in comparison to a guard, war, ele or even a support traited necro or mesmer ?
Ranger water field – what is 1 field vs eles multi fields, or virtue guards heals which provide prot, aegis, stability, even a group stun breaker at same time as the heals (albeit weaker ones but can be used 2-3 times per each ranger CD)?

So in group situations rangers are simply far far outdone by other professions while at same time their pet problems really come to the surface.

On top of that, vast majority of new rangers or PvE / casual rangers tend to trait and gear wrong making themselves immobile and a rally bait. But those are personal L2P issues which can be easily overcome, rest however unfortunately stays.

Not nearly as bad as people make them out to be.

They’re a walking water field with 20 seconds of stability, 6 seconds of invulnerability, and their own instant blast.

Axe/Torch + Sword/Warhorn with celestial gear, run with the melee train. You’re not going to be as strong as your heavy counterparts but you’re not useless.

A berserker LB ranger makes an incredibly effective sniper. You’re not going to do much in a battle of two groups diving through each other and chasing tails, but you are one of the best tools for removing their best sources of combo fields. Get used to rapidly spotting elementalists.

Sardaukar.7130:

A berserker LB ranger makes an incredibly effective sniper. You’re not going to do much in a battle of two groups diving through each other and chasing tails, but you are one of the best tools for removing their best sources of combo fields. Get used to rapidly spotting elementalists.

Basically this. Put together a firing squad of zerk rangers nestled in the backline and watch targets drop.

Don’t forget to spice those zerk rangers with zerk rifle warriors for even more sniping potential! And use those brown bears for that aoe condi clear! That’s a very good zerg busting comp now.

Personally I think they are awsome.

Longbows and traits can provide +20% extra damage to a target with vuln and piercing arrows always hurt if you are a zergling.

Water Field, 2 Fire fields, Ice Field, some leap finishers, a whirl finisher, physical projectile finishers and a blast finishers.

Can block attacks, reflect projectiles, pulls, lots of evades depending on weapon choices.

Can have 28s of stability but usually just the 20s with rampage as the usual.

Can be traited and set up to remove 6-8 conditions every 10 seconds + dodge rolls to remove blind and poison and gain protection.

Pets can play a huge part depending on what you are doing: Brown bear has 2 condi removals, red moa has AoE fury, hyena is double knock down and so on…

Not as heavy CC like warrior hammer but can still be an annoyance with cripples, chills, immobilizes and the general soft CC.

Has a few stun breakers like lighting reflexes, quickening zephyr ( I think that’s the name) and signent of renewal/stone should keep you good if it does come to chain stuns from a war if you’re not running the sword/dagger build for the 3 evades and 2 dodges, also rampage as one is pretty strong with all that stability.

Rangers are very versatile and at the end of the day it comes down to your build for what you are trying to do and how well you know how to do it to work with your play style.

A good playing can be useful with any class.

Rangers can be useful if you commit to playing in a way that is actually useful, but most players who are at all serious about WvW and had a ranger rolled something else long ago. In theory, a GS + S/WH ranger that is geared and traited correctly should have guardian-like survivability while providing an extra water field for the melee train, decent cleave DPS, plus some useful boons, but virtually no ranger plays like that.

These discussions always seem to turn into something about how oh, I do amazing single target damage against other random plinkers with my zerker build! Well guess what, you’re the rally bot if you don’t pay attention for one second, and you’re the free bag running around alone or in small groups.

Ranger is my preferred WvW profession. I suck in most 1v1 encounters…but shine when I am with a team (2 or more partners). I run LB/Axe & Horn….axe is a bit weak, but I find is does stress the opposing team in group encounters. LB is a blast…sitting back and snipping opposing players…watching them panic when they realize a ranger has them in his scope is fun.

80k kills in WvW and met 1 good ranger so far. Mostly they die in 2-3 or even 1 hit. I see them as easy lootbags.

They are pretty terrible in group combat, they should be strong roaming but I don’t think the good players pick ranger often.

Ppl still play ranger in wvw?

Rangers are difficult to play well. A good ranger is as good as any good mesmer or thief. If they play their class well, they are going to make a problem for whomever they are facing, be it 1v1, 5v5, or zerg v zerg. A ranger is not, however, a warrior, who can concentrate on only hitting 2 or 3 buttons and cc’ing and killing everything in sight. You need to know your whole repertoire and play it well.

Thieves and mesmers are a dime a dozen, but a good mesmer or a good thief can take on superior numbers regularly and come out with tons of loot bags… same with a good ranger.

When roaming, people you run into run nothing but cheese/troll builds (and Ranger has no equivalent cheese/troll build of its own to counter these).

And while you can build for zerging, other classes can do it a lot better.

Ranger can do good in 1v1s, but good luck in situations where you get swamped as your 1v1 turns into a 1vX.

So overall Ranger is meh/10.

C’mon, single target snipping is a waste of time in a lot of WvW, which is why Rifle warriors aren’t seen much at all. In keep work a Warrior with a LB is a lot better than a Ranger with a long bow, why? Easy, two of the warrior LB attacks are shoot and forget AoE’s while the poor ranger has to sit exposed on a wall in order to get his AoE off.

Rangers in the zerg tend to be pretty useless as well, at least the way our Commanders ask the zerg to move, my guess would be take a short bow and utilize it in zerg work with piercing arrow, but I always felt pretty useless in zerg work on my LB ranger, which is again the opposite of my LB warrior, which again can drop his AoE’s into active zerg areas while moving to really good effect.

Ranger pet is responsible for 30% ish of a rangers overall dps. The pet mechanics especially with lag are really a challenge particularly with ranged rangers. A melee ranger can keep a pet close. However, even with a bunker build on my ranger his survival wasn’t up to snuff if I tried to stay with the melee types at the head of the train. Pets have a tendency to run all over the map agro’n on their own anything that damages them, like AoE’s and wvwvw has a LOT of AoE’s. Pets are pretty useless in keep work as they can’t go outside the walls unless you skill up “guard” but then they usually die fast.

Sadly, I have found they’re just not as useful in wvw as other classes. Best example I have… I have over 80 ranks on my level 80 warrior and 15 ranks on my 80 Ranger… My Ranger has spent 2x more time in WvW than my Warrior.

Rangers are fine.

98% of ranger players are just plain bad.

I blame roleplaying games and books.

I always thought it would be cool if you could store your pet which would buff you up (since half your dmg/tankiness comes from your pet) and just play the character in WvW. I say this because pets normally die pronto when fighting a large group and pets are not that great at hitting anyone that is moving around a lot. Trap Ranger with the binding roots is very effective when groups collide though. Nothing kills me faster than being immobilized in the middle of red circles and not being able to cure the condition.

I wonder what ever happened to that walking arrow cart guild? A rather large ranger only group can cause some serious mayhem. I’d like see the havoc with 20 axe rangers using ricochet and a few rangers spamming barrage.

Carnius Magius.8091:

I wonder what ever happened to that walking arrow cart guild? A rather large ranger only group can cause some serious mayhem. I’d like see the havoc with 20 axe rangers using ricochet and a few rangers spamming barrage.

If JQ has a Ranger Guild…I’d love to participate in a Ranger Zerg…would be awesome -)

You mentioned it in your first post… in group oriented games there are 3 things that matter most… burst damage, AE damage, and group utility.

The class has 2 forms of burst on terrible weapons and no trait to reduce the cooldown on weapon swap.

The class has only 1 real form of AE damage in barrage, it does crap damage, is only a cripple, roots the ranger using it, and often gets a Ranger killed before it does anything noticeable due to retaliation.

Class utility is hard to get a read on. With so much of the class’ utility centered around their pets and spirits, and with pets and spirits being absolutely useless in WvW, they don’t provide anything. If pets and spirits actually worked in a larger group setting as opposed to just roaming? Who knows… probably still would be considered pretty low on the utility list, but they would at least provide something. The issue with spirits is how they tie you into a very specific spec and most people don’t really want to play that way.

Until these 3 areas are improved, there’s no real hope for the class as a whole in larger scale combat. It’s great at dueling and roaming (mostly because conditions are overpowered), but as the numbers go up, the Ranger’s worth goes down exponentially.

As a side note… someone else made nearly an identical thread yesterday:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Question-to-the-WvW-community/first#post3331717

RANGERS ARE GREAT!!!!!

…. for roaming! You can kill all guards in a camp in fast time and stand tall against all classes. Worst thing to fight are those high reg sword/sword warrys. But the best thing is – no thief will kill you. Sure you have to learn your class properly.

For large scale fights it kinda sux, thats true – but you can still have fun pickin out targets with ur longbow.

rangers not that bad but simply other classes do better in most part.
i do wvw as rangers cuz i like running with pet and hearing hawk.

arKRazor.8654:

Sardaukar.7130:

A berserker LB ranger makes an incredibly effective sniper. You’re not going to do much in a battle of two groups diving through each other and chasing tails, but you are one of the best tools for removing their best sources of combo fields. Get used to rapidly spotting elementalists.

Basically this. Put together a firing squad of zerk rangers nestled in the backline and watch targets drop.

Don’t make me laugh. These are free rallies. Glassy lb rangers can’t survive a single melee pain train pass. Drivers always go straight for the back line and soft kitten like rangers crumples. Staff eles and necros have a ton of survivability in contrast and do something like 4-5 times more aoe deeps.

Rangers with sentinel, pvt and knights with lb and oh Axe – that’s a different story

you can be help fun in zergs as well…
run shout build, full clerics, 90% boon increase, GS + 1h and war horn…you can stand toe to toe inside your zerg on the front line with the enemy zerg and you will out live alot of your wars and guards….along with throwing perma fury, might, regen and swift not only covering your stablity but the wars and guards stability that’s desperately needed to win a zerg fight, this is the only way for ranger to zerg and truely be helpful to your zerg as well as tag everything with the gs

Videos of successful Rangers in WvW would help. Zerg or havoc.

Not sure why people say Rangers don’t have any burst damage.. Sure our pets could use some buffing as their damage both stink and they die to quick. Roaming i’v heard they do quite well.

Aside from that, my ranger does more burst damage than my warrior. The rapid fire consistently does between 15k-20K damage with no might but 25 stacks of bloodlust. This is also using only the stacks of vulnerability rapid fire applies.

Barrage usually causes somewhere between 12K-16K to the front line and will continually apply cripple which can make it difficult to remove harmful conditions, if removal is targeting cripple.

Their escape capability is decent now with stealth capability. Their conditional removal could use some work, well a lot of work actually. It would also be nice if the pet learned to hit stuff and stayed alive for a change.

If you don’t gear them properly, they won’t be doing very good burst damage. I have to laugh at some people that post their builds then complain about damage. Mixing knights, valkyrie, berserker, maybe some carrion. Come on now.. really.

Spec for damage and learn to stay alive, you’d be surprised just how strong they are compared to other classes.

DeadlySynz.3471:

Not sure why people say Rangers don’t have any burst damage.. Sure our pets could use some buffing as their damage both stink and they die to quick. Roaming i’v heard they do quite well.

Aside from that, my ranger does more burst damage than my warrior. The rapid fire consistently does between 15k-20K damage with no might but 25 stacks of bloodlust. This is also using only the stacks of vulnerability rapid fire applies.

Barrage usually causes somewhere between 12K-16K to the front line and will continually apply cripple which can make it difficult to remove harmful conditions, if removal is targeting cripple.

Their escape capability is decent now with stealth capability. Their conditional removal could use some work, well a lot of work actually. It would also be nice if the pet learned to hit stuff and stayed alive for a change.

If you don’t gear them properly, they won’t be doing very good burst damage. I have to laugh at some people that post their builds then complain about damage. Mixing knights, valkyrie, berserker, maybe some carrion. Come on now.. really.

Spec for damage and learn to stay alive, you’d be surprised just how strong they are compared to other classes.

15 to 20k rapid fire means you’re sitting at 100% crit chance and popped all your trinkets. It also means this is 15 to 20k damage over 5 seconds. Eviscerate does this damage over one second. 100b does this damage over 3.5 seconds. Most melee weapons can auto attack for this damage over the same amount of time.

Burst does not mean you hit a single button and it does a lot of damage. It means you do very high DPS well in excess of your normal sustained dps. Rapid Fire does about the same damage as your sustained damage at max range with the primary benefit of rapid fire being the vulnerability stacks. If it didn’t put vulnerability on the target I believe the math shows it doing 5% more damage than your auto attack over the same time frame, but I’d have to dig for the thread.

Rangers fare fine in roaming. Try sword/dagger and GS and you won’t have problems. Sword/dagger and axe/torch is great too and so is Sword/dagger and LB or SB. It’s all about learning your dodges and blocks and how to play the sword.

Rangers are not terrible, it’s the mantra of using LB for everything that is giving the perception that rangers are terrible. Why kitten yourself to a weapon that is slow and fairly clunky. Try other things and you’ll see that the rangers are not as terrible as what people are making them out to be.

bllius.9027:

Videos of successful Rangers in WvW would help. Zerg or havoc.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Xsorus/videos

I’ve played a ranger up to bronze something or other before I switched to guardian for more bags (because ranger is a bag machine, but guardian even more so). I don’t call myself an expert or anything but having played ranger long enough and gotten enough grief for it I think I’m an expert in what is wrong with ranger.

There’s 2 issues with ranger.

1. PVE’rs playing rangers in WVW in zerk gear badly providing rally bait to enemy players. Enough said.

2. Actual WVW rangers played well are still pretty useless to the WVW meta. The problem here is if you use the traits and gear that will keep you alive in the zerg you’re doing nothing for the rest of the players except for blasting your own water field. You have practically no group synergy and you’re basically a solo player riding the crest of the zerg wave for bags.

Problem 1 is unfixable and problem 2 is anet’s problem unless someone out there can come up with a build that actually helps the zerg (and maybe that’s spirit build in next week’s patch but I ain’t holding my breath).

All that being said I know on BG they were calling for water fields and blast a lot this past week and none were forthcoming so I might switch back to ranger > >

From a roaming perspective 90% of rangers (glass long bow) are free kills, they just stand there and barrage and die. lol. The other 10% (fictional numbers btw) are usually decent players running decent builds. These rangers tend to fair well in roaming and small group situations.

I keep meaning to re gear my ranger, but then I fight one.

Peetee.9406:

Not nearly as bad as people make them out to be.

They’re a walking water field with 20 seconds of stability, 6 seconds of invulnerability, and their own instant blast.

Axe/Torch + Sword/Warhorn with celestial gear, run with the melee train. You’re not going to be as strong as your heavy counterparts but you’re not useless.

12 second invuln if traited (6 from signet, 6 from shout) and 28 second stability (20 from elite, 8 from signet if traited)

Why play Ranger when you can play Engineer is pretty much something you can ask. Almost as much range, more reliable AoE damage with circle AE and the amount of utility provided with that overloaded kit is just insane.

Also no stupid useless pet that I wish I could sell to the devil for a +20% stat buff.

1500 range is nice but only when you’re shooting from high ground. The melee has million of dashes with CC on it and your only way to really remove that immobolize instead of the bleed, cripple, poison or burn, is a bear, with a stupid AI. You will probably be dead by the time the brown bear Roar (assuming it doesn’t attempt to cancel the roar by walking). The stealthing thief will just Steal in to the back line and kill you before he poofs out.

The only thing I really like about Ranger in WvW is that I can name my eagle America and some people will notice it. (Also killing those upleveled people in a rapid fire + couple of AA)

Zeitzbach.9608:

Why play Ranger when you can play Engineer

More like why play Ranger when you can play any thing else.

Everything a Ranger does a staff Elementalist does better.

What a dreadful game it’d be if everyone had to run the same old boring stuff as everyone else. Build diversity is one of the key aspects in offering up a variable experience over a longer period of time. Having one of each profession at level 80, my perspective is certainly that fun can be had with all the options available. To some people it may be great fun to run around in a giant blob of hammer warriors, but for others, that kind of game play is the epitome of dullness and a waste of time.

I’ve experimented with lots of builds across all professions. Currently my ranger is using a longbow and axe/warhorn combination, and I don’t feel that it’s particularly weaker than any of the other professions. I get my kills, take my bruises, and move on. If people choose to 1v1 because they think I’m an easy kill, they’ll be surprised about 50% of the time, which is also the standard when I play my other professions. There is a sense of satisfaction when I’m able to take someone down using my sometimes unusual builds. I get more fun out of that than when I’m using what I think are more common specs – part of the fun for me is to not look this stuff up, but to just experiment.

Play to your strengths. If you’re playing a class that isn’t strong at one thing, don’t do that one thing with them. There should always be a set of strengths and weaknesses to account for – that’s half the fun. Not everyone wants to roll around the map with the need to always be able to open a fight with a 10K+ attack, while at the same time maintaining the ability to wimp out of the fight with a cheesy skill if things go south.

UltraFlyingTaco.7452:

how do you think rangers fare in wvw, roaming or otherwise?

I am no ranger player so this is second hand:

I have seen roaming rangers doing awesome things that haunt me at night. I would say that, if played well, they excel in roaming more than any other class in the game.

In zerg fights, I heard that rangers have some problems due to the low survivability of their pets. However, in a predominantly “tab targeting” world, pets may end up mitigating a lot of damage that was intended for the players. Rangers are perfect water field providers due to their Healing Spring. They can also be a pain in the kitten due to the Entangle skill. Also, rangers are one of the two classes (besides elementalists) that can clear defensive siege weaponry from a tower’s/keep’s wall, which is quite important.

I would argue that in the end, in GW2, success always depends on the skill level of the player, and whether you are comfortable with your class or not. (I, personally, don’t “get” how to play a thief, and maybe I never will.) If your opponent is good with her profession, she will kill you with any profession.

~MRA

glaphen.5230:

Everything a Ranger does a staff Elementalist does better.

sorry to rain on your parade, but a staff ele with a hybrid/tanker build still cannot hope to tank/survive better then any bow + sword/X ranger. If you were to use Scepter/Dagger or Dagger/Dagger i would not argue.

My thief has never lost to a ranger. their pets are laughable.

Prysin.8542:

glaphen.5230:

Everything a Ranger does a staff Elementalist does better.

sorry to rain on your parade, but a staff ele with a hybrid/tanker build still cannot hope to tank/survive better then any bow + sword/X ranger. If you were to use Scepter/Dagger or Dagger/Dagger i would not argue.

You’re implying that Ranger can do anything other than Barrage and Healing Spring in a zerg. Elementalist in zerker gear can kill multiple players with one cast of Meteor Shower. The other day I saw 5 players go down when a single Elementalist cast a Meteor Shower on a zerg. Elementalists are also immortal if within range of a tower. Seriously just compare http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_elementalist_skills#Two-handed to http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_ranger_skills#Longbow and tell me which is better. The Elementalist is better with just fire attunement and Ranger doesn’t even have a useful AoE besides Barrage which is far worse than a Meteor Shower or even a Lava Font.

The bigger the fight, the worse is a Ranger compared to other professions.

If played well a Ranger can beat pretty much anything in a 1v1 (except for very few builds) but he is pretty useless in a zerg. Why pick a Ranger for a zerg when you can have an ele instead. They do all the things Rangers can and even more.

Blackhat.4016:

The bigger the fight, the worse is a Ranger compared to other professions.

If played well a Ranger can beat pretty much anything in a 1v1 (except for very few builds) but he is pretty useless in a zerg. Why pick a Ranger for a zerg when you can have an ele instead. They do all the things Rangers can and even more.

This. Ranger’s don’t have the greatest group utility in zergs however take away that group and lower it 1v1 and you better not underestimate that ranger. The only thing I lost to on my ranger 1v1 is condition builds (which pretty much run the show when it comes to 1v1s). Signet warriors running mace/sheild + hammer are a laugh when I use sword dagger with lighting reflexes and have 6 evades at my disposal. I can get perma poison with one skill and use longbow for good burst damage from afar.

Even rangers can get into the condition meta though. Trap rangers are pretty old but they still work. I would say rangers are only beaten by necromancers when it comes to condtions.

All in all, don’t laugh at a ranger when you duel them, if they know their stuff they will probably kill you. However take em to a larger group and they just don’t excell as much, but then again, all medium armour classes do better on their own than in zergs so =p

i played ranger more than a year. after that i changed. try warrior or guardian and u will see the difference.

Ranger been my main character, the pet is a pain in wvw. Most of the time have to keep spamming F1 for it to attack. The downed skills on ranger suck and cool down for pet is too long. 1500 range is good but other skills that are needed don’t have half that range. Would be nice if pet could be put away and stay put away. When running if pet agros ranger gets bogged down. The underwater skills for ranger are godly but thanks to anet there is vitrually no underwater combat in wvw now. I miss the quaggan camps and the krait. Was a great farming area. The one hand sword is hard to work and move seems once locked on very hard to move. Anet needs to buff the ranger instead of nerfing it. Also get rid of ruins they are total waste of space.

Lord Of The Tree.5249:

Ranger been my main character, the pet is a pain in wvw. Most of the time have to keep spamming F1 for it to attack. The downed skills on ranger suck and cool down for pet is too long. .

The downed state would be ok if Anet could think about it for some time. If you are dead, how high is the chance that your pet is dead too. And on F4 cooldown because they are 99% the first to die anyway.

The Pet AI is a pain in any game mode . You need to qualities if you decide to roll a ranger :
1) you have to accept that you have to work much harder for something other classes do by pressing a few buttons , be it offense or support
2) huge degree of tolerance for sometimes completely ludicrous pet pathing and behavior

I main a ranger and i enjoy the whole nature magic druid thing , but if you are looking for pure efficiency , warriors and guardians for zergs and mesmers or thieves for roaming . Hell , even a well built DD ele is amazing for roaming . All these classes are tempo setters .
If you want to play ranger you need to know every big hit from others and dodge it because you have poor innate sustain or defense . You need to dodge , no EP , stealth, blur or whatever to save your kitten .

there is no hard core guilds taking a ranger ! this is the answer

Rangers are fine. Just try another build.
Pets are also fine to a point, i mainly use them for the CC and let them have their fun otherwise.

Tongku.5326:

However, they suffer a lot in full groups:
Lack of CC – cause what is 1 binding roots vs a hammer warrior’s cc ?
Pet problems – not ranger exclusive, minion necros and phantasm mesmers have same problems, add to that the lack of pet AI in this game.
Lack of stability
Lack of stun breakers
Lack of group utility – what can a ranger provide in comparison to a guard, war, ele or even a support traited necro or mesmer ?
Ranger water field – what is 1 field vs eles multi fields, or virtue guards heals which provide prot, aegis, stability, even a group stun breaker at same time as the heals (albeit weaker ones but can be used 2-3 times per each ranger CD)?

CC: spike trap, frost trap, muddy terrain, entangle, hilt bash, point blank shot, crippling shot, crippling talon, winter’s bite, path of scars + pet fear / immobilize / chill.
Stability: signet of the wild, rampage as one.
Stun breakers for rangers : quickening zephyr, signet of renewal, protect me, lightning reflexes. You also have invulnerability with signet of stone.

They’re not the best at healing, they’re not the best at dpsing and they’re not the best at survivability. Still, there are very viable options for wvw other than using a bow with zerker gear…

Fenrir.6183:

Rangers are fine. Just try another build.
Pets are also fine to a point, i mainly use them for the CC and let them have their fun otherwise.

Tongku.5326:

However, they suffer a lot in full groups:
Lack of CC – cause what is 1 binding roots vs a hammer warrior’s cc ?
Pet problems – not ranger exclusive, minion necros and phantasm mesmers have same problems, add to that the lack of pet AI in this game.
Lack of stability
Lack of stun breakers
Lack of group utility – what can a ranger provide in comparison to a guard, war, ele or even a support traited necro or mesmer ?
Ranger water field – what is 1 field vs eles multi fields, or virtue guards heals which provide prot, aegis, stability, even a group stun breaker at same time as the heals (albeit weaker ones but can be used 2-3 times per each ranger CD)?

CC: spike trap, frost trap, muddy terrain, entangle, hilt bash, point blank shot, crippling shot, crippling talon, winter’s bite, path of scars + pet fear / immobilize / chill.
Stability: signet of the wild, rampage as one.
Stun breakers for rangers : quickening zephyr, signet of renewal, protect me, lightning reflexes. You also have invulnerability with signet of stone.

They’re not the best at healing, they’re not the best at dpsing and they’re not the best at survivability. Still, there are very viable options for wvw other than using a bow with zerker gear…

So, what you’re saying is, we are very ok. Which translates into meh.

My ranger kicks kitten in WvW – duels, 1vsX and zerg

I play a ranger, roamer build, ranger runes, knights armor, LB/GS with a panther and alt spider for AoE poison. I find the class to very helpful for Healing Spring, Entangle and the signet of the hunt for staying at the head of the zerb. Timing the long bow volley with the zerg presents a ton of bags and kills (my ranger is rank 125 and has logged 5K kills), I run an ascended bow with AoE sigil of fire but……

The toon is weak with multiple opponents, without a doubt and I rely on escaping more than I like to admit with GS #3. 1V1, the class is only as good as the person running the keys and I win some and lose some. The condi removal, low health pool and lack of true power can be frustrating but for havoc and roaming, the class really is very powerful.

I took my warrior out yesterday and brought them into WvW and there’s a huge difference in survivability and kills to time ratio. The warrior is only rank 17 but I got 3 ranks in about 2 hours and 80 kills. Same time with my ranger this morning and I logged 60 and 1 rank.

What I will end with is that the ranger is NEVER boring, can handle a LOT of situations where they are up against a single or 2 opponents or as a griefer taking out supply, camps, sentries or just slowing things down with muddy terrain or entangle. The class should never be dismissed out of hand but like Eles and Engineers, you have to know the class to play it well.