Guild Wars 2

Maxed out my 5 chars to 80. Thief, Ranger, Mesmer,Guardian,Warrior.
All of these are gear dependant to some extent , but more so the Ranger.
Excluding the thief which is not fully geared , which of these would you think is the best performer all round…

Ranger!

Best performer? Well, my guardian runs circles around my ranger in terms of raw survivability. My ranger deals more damage, but that’s only because I run cat pets and trait 30 beast mastery.

Out of all the classes you listed, I would rank the ranger as lowest on the list when it comes to overall performance.

If you’re talking about PVE then it doesn’t surprise me to see Ranger at the top of the list. I have a Level 80 Warrior, Guardian and Ranger and I’m a few levels from 80 on an Elementalist and the Ranger is my favorite for clearing zones and PVE content.

I run balanced builds on all my characters, no glass cannons and while each class has it’s advantages my Ranger is second only to my Guardian in general Survivability. Of course, this comes with the exception that my Ranger is pet dependent, without the pet he’s not nearly as good. My Ranger has very good damage output (when counting pet damage) and does very well in almost every PVE situation.

If you’re talking Dungeons then my Ranger would be dead last on the list to the point where I won’t even bring him to begin with. The other 3 (Guardian, Warrior, Ele) are great in dungeons, and bring a lot to any party they are with.

I honestly don’t get anyone that says Rangers suck in PVE, I don’t know what they’re doing wrong but my Ranger is a PVE Powerhouse. I don’t PvP or WvW so I can’t speak to that at all.

I use a slight variation of the Hybrid Beastmaster Build that was posted here, if anyone is curious. It’s very effective in PVE.

The only thing my ranger brought to dungeon parties was QZ for reviving. Now it’s been nerfed so ranger really has no redeeming qualities for dungeons.

Darth Llama.9217:

I honestly don’t get anyone that says Rangers suck in PVE, I don’t know what they’re doing wrong but my Ranger is a PVE Powerhouse. I don’t PvP or WvW so I can’t speak to that at all.

Rangers are great in open world PvE, but horrible in dungeons (which is pve and I think what most people tend to mean when they state or allude to rangers being bad in pve). Then again, it’s really nothing for a class to be proud of since open world pve tends to be kitten easy anyways…

Rangers just tend to be unreliable due to their pet mechanic. Pets can be somewhat of a gamble to rely on in any more difficult content (dungeons, WvW, PvP, etc.), which I mainly attribute to their seemingly conscious attempts at standing just inside attack range of enemy skills even when calling them back to you.

Rangers are pretty close to being par when pets actually work, but when they decide to kitten on you, there goes like at least 30% of your class. Pretty much every other class doesn’t have to worry about their mechanic going suicidal on them and they have a bit more fine tuned control over it; pets are just a gamble at times.

BroScientist.9875:

The only thing my ranger brought to dungeon parties was QZ for reviving. Now it’s been nerfed so ranger really has no redeeming qualities for dungeons.

I always wonder why people say that. “No redeeming qualities”. I think I can argue against that extreme point of view. I PUG a lot of dungeons so I’m not always playing with pros, ya know? So in places like TA or Arah, I can trait the down state a little and become the best resurrector in the group.

Search and rescue with a clerics build focusing on regen and power and might stacking, maybe even fortifying bond and master’s bond with a bear; SoR for group stun break / group removal, trait healing power and maybe run Spirit of nature. I can be giving almost permanent protection (I can come close in CoE since with spiders you get immobilize and with spirt of stone and blue moa you can give the team pretty decent protection—just make sure you pop spirit right on top of subject alpha or else he kills it) and a big, long, aoe blind from sun spirit on alpha can be nice too. I generally bring a blue moa for when we stack and a drake with healing spring. If the group has members who are not dodging well, the blast heal from the drake can be really nice. With two rangers in sync in the group and other blast / leaping profession skills from other professions, you get 100% healing spring uptime and plenty of chances for leap/blast heals on alpha. A guardian and a ranger or two guardians or two rangers can really make a CoE run go much smoother.

I mean, yeah, the consensus is that rangers “don’t bring anything” when I’ll be resurrecting zerk warriors and mesmers—-with my pet—-while I hit Whirling Defense to pull aggro to myself. I’ve saved more than one warrior in my day, unfortunately, warrior tends to attract a certain kind of gamer—a selfish gamer—and I rarely get any ty’s from them. Maybe they don’t want to admit to being saved by a “kittened profession”.

Unfortunately Chopps I play a defensive ranger in dungeons as well and it seems fine until there are two rangers in a group. It’s then very difficult to contribute extra offensive skills to take control of a combat.

For example, I’ve seen the Ascalon fractal a few times now with two rangers in the group and it’s been a struggle to push into the courtyard. The rangers can lay traps in bottlenecks and put healing springs on the perimeter but there’s nothing to help an advance into the melee. Rangers going into the control area will probably get squished. The player groups inevitably get pushed out of courtyard and have to snipe the enemies from the perimeter making very slow progress.

Stooperdale.3560:

Unfortunately Chopps I play a defensive ranger in dungeons as well and it seems fine until there are two rangers in a group. It’s then very difficult to contribute extra offensive skills to take control of a combat.

For example, I’ve seen the Ascalon fractal a few times now with two rangers in the group and it’s been a struggle to push into the courtyard. The rangers can lay traps in bottlenecks and put healing springs on the perimeter but there’s nothing to help an advance into the melee. Rangers going into the control area will probably get squished. The player groups inevitably get pushed out of courtyard and have to snipe the enemies from the perimeter making very slow progress.

Well that’s a completely different fight. I was talking, with that example, about how to melee stack with ranger in arah or coe. In that fractal, you’re better off pulling mobs to the gate entrance first. Don’t run a might stacking build if you have no source of might (in pugs you find tons of warriors so this isn’t generally a huge problem in normal dungeons), firstly. Secondly, if you have trouble with DPS—it’s a 5 person team ya know? Make sure the team has enough DPS for that fight—rangers are actually quite good to have there, along with warriors and necros. Spirit of nature will instantly revive your dead NPCs and the captain is best fought at range. Cleaving axes / bows are great for this. I’ve been successful with many group comps on that fractal. Your rangers probably made the mistake of traiting marksmanship and skirmishing and then sending a cat out into aoe without signet of the wild or anything.

Rangers have something that, when they mess up, outwardly looks bad: a dead pet walking around on CD. Everyone knows, at that point, the ranger is kitten PvE in this game just isn’t hard enough, though, where not bringing a ranger is really going to make a difference. The dungeons are easy and forgiving for the most part and whenever ANET tries to make it hard (simin for example, which I beat with a team of ranger, elementalist, engineer, guardian, warrior) people complain and ANET nerfs it down. I wasn’t carried either in that group—know how I know? We couldn’t beat it twice in a row then checked gear: the elementalist only had 2300 attack. After re-gearing to 3000 attack, we won. My attack was roughly 3200 with cats beastmaster and honed, dual axes. I beat her before she was nerfed, back when the Dungeon Master title meant something—even if you couldn’t display it openly.

Pets dying a lot in PvE/dungeons—where you should almost always be running beastmaster—just shouldn’t happen.

There’s a lot of armchair analysis going on but some of it has merit. In any case, some people only took the time to level an 80 once and maybe they’re trying to gear it up for when the game changes in ranger’s favor. Unless the ranger is clearly inexperienced, there’s not really any good reason not to play with them unless you’re being elitist and exclusionary just for the sake of hearsay.

Chopps.5047:

Pets dying a lot in PvE/dungeons—where you should almost always be running beastmaster—just shouldn’t happen.

I wouldn’t say you should always be running BM…. kind of ruins the point of having other trait lines.

Rangers can be good at survival and potentially damage in dungeons if they are setup for the specific situation at hand. Sure your pet may die (a lot), especially if you aren’t used to controlling them and their crappy AI, but if you know the fight you can do quite well in whichever way you want to contribute. I’ve used control builds, sword builds, ranged builds, pet builds, and even a bit of support here and there. I usually swap it up before each fight depending on our groups strengths and weaknesses, sometimes even swapping multiple traits and weapons several times in the same fractal.

I still find that pets and AOEs do not mix well though… after calling them back they always seem to stand just inside the AOE field on purpose just to make you rage, no matter what distance you run (unless you run to the opposite side of Tyria).

I think that a lot of more serious players that don’t really play a ranger, tend to see them as a kind of gamble, which also tends to label them as a liability. Most other classes have a bit more precise control over their respective mechanic…

I still think they should jus balance classes around PvP and dungeons only, because 99% of open world is kitten easy…

They only balance professions with tpvp. They conform pve (which includes instances like dungeons) to professions rather than the other way around. Right now, in pvp, I do not run full BM. But in dungeons I always do. Why? It’s easy to land pet hits on bosses and pets hit so hard, in particular the cats for a zerk build. Not that you always run cats. But a BM/melee build is what you want for DPS (cof path 1)—it’s risky but the payoff is worth it. You can run different builds—more pvp kind of builds— but that’s best for open world or the better, newer reworked dungeons. TA for example, I do not run full GC. But I do max out BM because those pet hits are so nice.