Guild Wars 2

I think we can come to some conclusion that a certain profession is the least usefull all-round of all professions.

But the margin would be so small that it would be completely overshadowed by individual player skill. Guardians and Warriors are top of the foodchain in WvW, but i’d take 1 good Ranger over 5 bad Warriors any day of the week.

Coarr.3286:

Rednik.3809:

Ranger. At least thieves are excellent scouts, tappers, supply disruptors and have very useful blast ability, engi can shine in small-scale roaming squads. Rangers are underperforming everywhere, sadly

i need to upgrade my pc and record some videos. the thinking that rangers are bad became a disease.

Yes, because editing 2 hours of filming into 10 mins of your glorious victorys vs some clueless fellas is sure gonna prove there is nothing wrong with ranger right? I have yet to see vids of rangers getting their kitten handed to them and i know for a fact it happends more often than them emerging victorious.

Can’t say ranger is the worst…..but rangers are the least wanted class in wvwvw since priority in wvwvw these days is something like Guardian > Warrior > Necromancer > Elementalist > everything else

I think it could also be a matter of perspective. I play a hybrid GS Mesmer that uses stealth as a primary skill to avoid death and simply annoy the blob. What I’ve found (and this is pretty darn sad really) is that Feedback and Null Field tend to do amazing damage (if not annoy the hell out of the blob) and work very well at dropping sections.

In a usually situation, I’ll find someone who’s in the center of the blob and dropping constant ranged attacks, hit them with Feedback and Null Field, then drop the iZerker. After that, the biggest problem is picking up all the loot bags.

I know that sounds lame but you’d be surprised on how stupid people are and just stand there while they die.

Another way to look at it… look on your server forum what www guilds normaly recruit. Never seen a post where a guild run out of engis or rangers. Normaly it goes: we recruit guards> warr> mesmers> ele/necro. Never seen a thief/engi/everything else recruiting post :P
Thiefs and engis do good on themselfs anyway but rangers… go home :P

no (good) guild raids hire rangers …. so may be there is a reason !
i vote ranger !

All medium armor classes seem to be the least wanted classes in WvW. Thief, engi and ranger

That is pretty sad. Time to buff these classes for zerg fights. More AoE support, more hard hitting skills instead of multihit AoE damage skills because of retaliation and the most important: good AoE autoattacks since with lag thats almost all that can be used

I belong to a league 1 european server (in pretty good position to win the current season).
In my guild rules are clear: roster is
-4 warriors
-4 guardians
-4 necros
-4 eles
-1 to 2 max mesmers

This is the result of pretty good experienced player (not me)
With last patch we are testing some abilities on thieves to stop ennemy zerg thus we are likely to replace 1or 2 guys by 1 or 2 thieves

So I would answer that for large fight rangers / engineer are completely outside the scope of “usefull / optimized” professions.
Mesmers are only seen as veil bots.

I am a mesmer and I should be honest: there are worst position than my profession.

About solo roaming the common feeling is that it is something kept for warriors / thieves and also good engineers.

All in all my feeling is that rangers are in really bad position.
Engineer are stuck in roaming and mesmers in veilboting.

why are you afraid of naming your guild on vizu? im pretty sure we can handle your group setup at a same size or us with less ppl and ranger + engi + thief in the group to show you how viable the medium armor classes are

You can try but you will not succeed.
Facts are facts.
Look at top guilds (not mine) composition.
Look at GvG.
Same skill level / Same organization => not question to ask => warrior / guardian /ele / necro pain train FTW.
I am not happy with this situation but let’s face it this is what is in place for close to one year now.

Arpheus.6918:

All medium armor classes seem to be the least wanted classes in WvW. Thief, engi and ranger

That is pretty sad. Time to buff these classes for zerg fights.

yes, more buff for the thiefs coz god mode in not enough.
also thiefs are intended as solo class, to some extent all mediums are intended as solo-ish class.

Imo all classes are just as good. There’s no such thing as a useless class. The class is as good as the player playing it.

Also, rangers are VERY useful in group play. =)

spiritus.7983:

Arpheus.6918:

All medium armor classes seem to be the least wanted classes in WvW. Thief, engi and ranger

That is pretty sad. Time to buff these classes for zerg fights.

yes, more buff for the thiefs coz god mode in not enough.
also thiefs are intended as solo class, to some extent all mediums are intended as solo-ish class.

This is an MMO. Solo class shouldn’t even exist. Thieves are strong roaming classes, sure. There are ways to improve their group value without impacting their roaming game though. Shortbow for example. Not a strong roaming weapon because it’s mostly used to escape with or travel fast. Give it more group utility. Allow trick shot to bounce off friendly players for example giving them a boon. Limited impact in solo roaming but would add some value to the class in zergs. Traps are another place. Completely useless by and large. Still wouldn’t be taken even if buffed for roaming because you need the defensive skills. Could provide very unique WvW value.

Kicast.1459:

You can try but you will not succeed.
Facts are facts.
Look at top guilds (not mine) composition.
Look at GvG.
Same skill level / Same organization => not question to ask => warrior / guardian /ele / necro pain train FTW.
I am not happy with this situation but let’s face it this is what is in place for close to one year now.

i remember a fight ( we 2x ranger, 1x thief, 1x guard and 1x mesmer ) vs a very successful gvg guild from elona ( they around 20 people ) we have downed their eles a few times, also a necro ( couldnt stomp them of course ). after around 5 minutes they retreated and went away to cap some camps. they did not bring down a singel of my comrades. must be very disapointing for the crosshair following zombies

i have 2 level 80 rangers and i swap them both in wvwvw. if only i can play 2 rangers at a time.

edit: i also play a zerker warrior.

Rangers just plain sucks… but they do have cripples and water fields.
Mesmers are as useful as staff eles. They don’t get much bags, but they help the zerg enormously. Every zerg should have 3 of each at least.
Thieves contribute nothing for the zerg. The only way to play a thief unselfishly is to follow an enemy zerg and communicate where it is, and rez the down, oh and finish the weak. But since the level of stealth thieves can have is being nerfed, they aren’t going to be as useful to an organized zerg.
Nothing much needs to be said about properly traited guardians.
Warriors have always had it good. Pretty much any noob with a warrior is deadly. Since there is an abundance of warriors because of it’s the best class for PvE, I’d say this one goes up the uselessness chart.
Engineers is sort of my second pick. They are a mystery to me. Like the ranger, they can be quite deadly in pvp.

So my vote is thief. And I have one.

Order of uselessness (least important for a properly functioning zerg) from most to least (my opinion):
1)Thief (after Dec 10 patch)
2)Engineer
3)Ranger
4)Mesmer
5)Warrior
6)Necro
7)Elementalist
8)Guardian

I think everything is relative, and with all the available foods and other buffs in wvw, there are some professions that are a bit over-powered or hard to counter relative to the others.

Also, some are judging professions by their usefulness to the individual, and not the usefulness to the server. A solo thief ganking every doly s/he comes across is pretty useful for slowing or stopping upgrades. A mesmer porting golems to a keep door is very VERY useful.

It’s kinda about perspective.

In wvw a lot of the times the class needs to be spec’d for group play, not 1v1. Most classes have better group play than others. I think thief, ranger, mesmer and engineer are better fighting 1v1 or smaller numbers but I don’t think they’re extremely useful in zerg fighting (unless you are Mesmer portal bombing, etc.) which all T1 is. BUT they are extremely useful to group comp and scouting.

Sam Gem.1246:

Order of uselessness (least important for a properly functioning zerg) from most to least (my opinion):
1)Thief (after Dec 10 patch)
2)Engineer
3)Ranger
4)Mesmer
5)Warrior
6)Necro
7)Elementalist
8)Guardian

insane one..u didn’t read that pathc notes i see)

Gotta love the try-hard medium-armour players trying to convince themselves they’re wanted.

Rangers, Engi’s and Thieves are all fantastic classes for small/medium scale (less than 15 per side). Indeed, they’re 3 of the strongest classes for it. But they simply don’t scale up for the large fights. When you take it to more than 20 per side, they just can’t compete.

The reason for this is quite simple: AoE is king, and medium armour doesn’t bring any. Almost all the AoE damage a medium class can deal is condition damage, and the larger the group you’re targetting, the more AoE cleanses they have, the more irrelevant conditions become. In terms of direct damage, medium classes don’t really have any AoE. Piercing Arrows are incredibly situational and unreliable, Grenades hit like a wet noodle (if you ignore the condi-damage), and ClusterBomb…. you can drop it 4 times then you have to just stand there doing nothing.

Don’t get me wrong, they’re still monster classes in small scale, where single-target damage actually means something and conditions tick for more than 1 second. And of course they’re not 100% useless in large scale, they can contribute in a small way. But the point is there isn’t really anything they can do that other classes can’t do better. Ranger for waterfield? Ele can do that, and more. Thief for blast finisher? Guardian/Warrior can do that nearly as well, and do a ton of other stuff. Engi for AoE conditions? Necro does it better. Engi for group buffs? Guardian does it better.

Jack of all trades, Master of none.

Bull kitten. No class is better than any other. Yday we had a group of 5 people of our guild going: 2 thieves, 1 ele, 1 guardian and 1 engineer. We came upon countless groups of enemies (our size or bigger) and didn’t die once.

One fight was 2 necros, 1 warr, 1 guardian and 1 mesmer. Technically we should have lost, according to all those who are saying warriors, guardians and necros are “OP”. We stomped them all within 1 minute.

It’s ridiculous to come up with “Class x is better than class y.” because no class is better than another. Each has their own strategic elements and advantages, and each has it’s weaknesses.

Thieves have stealth something every group can use to surprise enemies (same goes for mesmers). Elementalists have huge aoe abilities. Guardians are decent as tanks. Warriors have a load of direct damage, but most of it melee. Necro is master of conditions, ranger has tank abilities through pet and so on and so forth.

Good players > Bad players, whatever the classes.

in my pov thiefs are viable for ZvZ, they dont bring as much utility as other classes may, but can aoe the kitten outa the enemy zerg, using healing signet daggerstorm right in the enemy with your heavy’s & after that clusterbombspam/auto to finish em off, the mobility they have is usefull to get out off the cc & they can also get to the back of the enemy zerg easelly to get the low hp enemys down quick w d/d backstab or heartseeker
it, offcourse, all depends on your build & skill playing the class (don’t come fully zerk for zerg).
warr & guard are alot easyer to play ZvZ, but when you play thief right, u get moar lootbags (especially cuz w full melee warr its hard to tagg everything, hammer s slow & sword aint the best dam wise, throw some skill lagg in the mix & u miss lotta baggs, guard staff-auto-spam is better to tagg then warr but it hasn’t the range of the thiefs sb)

& thief s also good at scouting/roaming (better than warr & guard)
now dont get me wrong, I love to play all 3 in wvw (& maybe even engi when I get my build right) but just to correct the peeps sayin thiefs are bad, l2p first

I suppose if the definition of “useless” simply refers to classes that can’t throw out a lot of AOE or support like a warrior, necro or guardian, then I suppose you could call Rangers “useless” to a zerg.

In other words all classes should have similar abilities and do similar things in a zerg or they shouldn’t be there? Granted Ranger does have a few issues that Anet is promising to address, but I still enjoy my Ranger and don’t think I’m being useless while in a zerg. Far from it, I’m usually killing a lot of enemy as long as I stay out of trouble.

All classes have their uses in WvW if played right. I have an 80 Ranger, Guardian and Warrior and find them all useful in different ways. Unfortunately a lot of the people with the perception that Rangers are useless have never played a level 80 Ranger consistently in WvW and do not know how to play a Ranger. But I guess perception becomes reality…

Threads like this one just perpetuate the perception and aren’t generally helpful to contributing to the idea of balancing teams/zergs/groups with a mixture of all classes that use their unique skill sets to form an effective fighting force.

Sirendor.1394:

Bull kitten. No class is better than any other. Yday we had a group of 5 people of our guild going: 2 thieves, 1 ele, 1 guardian and 1 engineer. We came upon countless groups of enemies (our size or bigger) and didn’t die once.

One fight was 2 necros, 1 warr, 1 guardian and 1 mesmer. Technically we should have lost, according to all those who are saying warriors, guardians and necros are “OP”. We stomped them all within 1 minute.

It’s ridiculous to come up with “Class x is better than class y.” because no class is better than another. Each has their own strategic elements and advantages, and each has it’s weaknesses.

Thieves have stealth something every group can use to surprise enemies (same goes for mesmers). Elementalists have huge aoe abilities. Guardians are decent as tanks. Warriors have a load of direct damage, but most of it melee. Necro is master of conditions, ranger has tank abilities through pet and so on and so forth.

Good players > Bad players, whatever the classes.

This is so true. People seem to think that wvw = zerg. In small guilds or groups skill matters and good people are so kitten deadly.
And whoever said that after 10th december thiefs are useless I wish you much of luck against the improved d/d thiefs.

Most Worthless? Puzzle Jumpers, regardless of class.

Iconoklast.2389:

I’m sorry but mesmer reflects can absolutely crush the average militia zerg

And wow, have you ever seen a mesmer reflect down a group of Omegas? Freaking hilarious!!!

Thief after the new patch lol

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Most Worthless? Puzzle Jumpers, regardless of class.

+1 broha!

That out of the way I’m curious to know the OP’s motivation. I’d like to know because honestly these types of threads vex me….they really vex me. I’m not easy to vex, but I am vexed.

well I like that the worst of us think eles have some use. My WvW ele is way way pumped to stay the kitten out of the line of fire while staying on the commander and HEALING.

All of them have their benefits.

Normally I could care less about responding to a troll thread which this obviously is…
There are no useless classes in WvW, only inexperienced players, and a few dumb commanders. However with regards to that lack of ranger appreciation, I thought I might add a few pointers to my fellow rangers.
There is more to war than just being in a zerg. If you think a ranger needs to roll in the front lines, you are neglecting the strengths of the class. In big zerg fights, I stay mobile, and if I see an enemy downed, I don’t need to stake him, he is dead, rapid fire melts bodies. If his buddy wants to try and rally him, there is a knockback for that. I collect countless bags from melting the downed, but Im not here for the loot. Get in TS, anticipate the flow of the zerg, and stay “ranged”, be one step ahead (more like behind or beside) of your commander and with great speed buffs its easy. Someone thinks you are an easy target, remember we do have stealth now. Barrage nukes are super fun in zergs, a trap or two, is also a nice aoe. Signet of stone and 30secs stability I can plow thru almost any aoe circles, whereas I see many frontline players who just don’t make it out.
In a small havoc crew, warhorn speed is loved by all.
Taking keeps or towers, rangers are great at melting siege on walls, a nice barrage is a deterrent for anyone standing on top. A knockback is great for the annoying caster dropping aoe down below.
Defending a tower/keep, there are so many nooks and safe spots, where a ranger can stand and rain down dps, melting rams before they even get built, and knockback for anyone manning one.
Need supply now? Rangers are one the fastest for getting to a camp and back and soloing a camp is easy peasy, I have saved numerous towers simply by being the one who finished that arrow cart just in time.
out of 5 fully leveled toons, my ranger is the most fun imo. I don’t need to justify it to anyone, my guild knows me, and Im always welcome.I could go on and on about tactics, and playing with your brains but my rank speaks for itself as to how the class fares in wvw. Sure I may not be able to solo a thief, and mesmers are annoying, but that’s not my job. If I want to roam solo and play scout, I have a thief for that job. Metalhead warriors and guards don’t scare me, In fact I love melting a guard who thinks he is tough, and using poison to add insult to injury if he thinks he can out heal my dps.
So to all my brother rangers, don’t listen to the ignorance. The class has many strengths and uses.
My fav job in the zerg is melting the downed…“if its dark red, its dead”

You don’t need to justify it to anyone, so you post a huge wall of text.

Gotcha.

I used to try to convince myself that my Ranger was useful. But I’ve stopped lying to myself now. Not happy about it, I had fun on my Ranger – until I leveled my Ele to 80 and realized she can do everything I used to do on my Ranger way better plus a lot more. (Not talking about 1 v 1 or roaming so don’t bother posting about that.)

One big problem with Rangers is they have to use their Utility Skills to actually do something useful. With other classes, their actual weapon skills are useful enough so that they can use their Utility Skills for… well, utility.

Johje Holan.4607:

I used to try to convince myself that my Ranger was useful. But I’ve stopped lying to myself now. Not happy about it, I had fun on my Ranger – until I leveled my Ele to 80 and realized she can do everything I used to do on my Ranger way better plus a lot more. (Not talking about 1 v 1 or roaming so don’t bother posting about that.)

One big problem with Rangers is they have to use their Utility Skills to actually do something useful. With other classes, their actual weapon skills are useful enough so that they can use their Utility Skills for… well, utility.

Basically. I think most people who say Ranger is the most useless are people who rolled one and were completely disappointed.

UnrepentantProcrastinator.7420:

Johje Holan.4607:

I used to try to convince myself that my Ranger was useful. But I’ve stopped lying to myself now. Not happy about it, I had fun on my Ranger – until I leveled my Ele to 80 and realized she can do everything I used to do on my Ranger way better plus a lot more. (Not talking about 1 v 1 or roaming so don’t bother posting about that.)

One big problem with Rangers is they have to use their Utility Skills to actually do something useful. With other classes, their actual weapon skills are useful enough so that they can use their Utility Skills for… well, utility.

Basically. I think most people who say Ranger is the most useless are people who rolled one and were completely disappointed.

Well i played ranger for almost a year. I also played warrior and guardian for almost a year. And a thief too.

I formed my opinion objectivley, by alot of compairing. I love all my char just as much, but i dont play ranger anymore because its subpar compared to others.

There are those who defend rangers and their capabilities, but they are biased towards their loving class and refuse to accept anything else. Like parents who refuse to accept their kids are using drugs…

These are probably the most useless threads. Is the original poster interested in choosing a class and believes they can be ranked (with no criteria or context given) from 1-8 and he’d be okay picking #7 but not #8?

I feel like this is just bait for ranger hate.

Most useless class? I’d have to say none. As a previous poster said though, the player determines the usefulness.

By the way, any other Rangers run through WvW with a 30/30/0/10/0 build? I switched to that for when we were taking back a tower and it’s actually more useful and seems to survive longer in WvW than my normal trap build. A Signet of Stone that hits us is so useful…why can’t it affect us normally without a trait again?