Guild Wars 2

Something is very wrong with the ranger profession when almost every topic is about someone complaining about something.
This has to be addressed. A profession with so many things broken, sub-par or simply useless should be on top of priority list.

Pretty much every profession forum looks like that from time to time.

Not saying that the Ranger is fine how he is, though…

I agree. It’s inexcusable that the Dev team can’t take a few minutes to at least aknowledge our concerns and provide us with information on the current state of this broken, kittened class. One would good that the next patch has several fixes for us but its highly unlikely. For the ranger class, this is looking like gw1 all over again…

Devs prove us wrong!

Well most players complain about their classes.
Each class has their own weak spot.
People who are playing that class notice and are unhappy about it.
Many forget to also see the power that this exact class offers.

After getting a Guardian, Warrior and Ranger to level 80 I dare to say that I have a good overview of all those classes.
Rangers used to be the most fun profession for me.
I got a 100% map, owned more than 5200 dungeon tokens (including Arah and Eternity) and 3 complete exotic gears.
I tend to switch my gear and masteries in a single dungeon for several time, adopting to the enemies I face.

To cut a long story short.
With twice the effort of playing another class can’t even reach half of the “power” playing my ranger.

Example:
A Warrior with 750 condition damage can throw his off-hand-sword for 5800 damage which equals more than 18 auto attacks of my 1150 condition damage Ranger.
While having nearly twice the armor and having supportive shouts which heal my team for about 2k~ each.

It’s not Warriors or Guardians being overpowered, neither are Elementalists or Thieves: Those classes (including Mesmer in upper-tier) having a great balance compared to each other.
It’s just the Ranger being incredibly far off after the exaggerated end-beta nerfs and basically a dead class after the recent “animation-fix” which killed the last source of power the Ranger had.
(Low CD attackspeed buff @pet change)

I’ve pretty much lost my desire to play the game after the last patch due to the issues everyone has been complaining about.

Most of the utility skills just aren’t that strong, especially spirits, lots of things are bugged up, and most of our weapons just aren’t that good.

The shortbow was the only thing redeeming about the ranger. It was our only decent primary weapon, the others being very situational or only being useful as a weapon you switched to for the powerful skills, then swapped back. But the roughly 8% nerf in the primary attack changed all that, reducing the damage of the shortbow by a noticeable amount.

Normally I would just adapt and switch over to some other weapon or build, but due to so many things about the ranger being broken, I don’t see a solution. Right now I’m just taking a break from the game, hoping to see some improvements in the near future.

Since I haven’t played Shortbow, I can’t comment about that nerf, but for me, as a melee ranger, the biggest problem with the class is Pet responsiveness. (or really, the total lack of)

For example, Lightning Breath is a huge burst move. It deals loads of damage. If you don’t use it with QZ or immobilizes (both really..) you’re never going to hit anything in pvp with it, because no one’s going to stand still long enough for your lizard to:

1. cancel it the first time, because you hit it during an animation it was already doing, causing it to go on a short cooldown
2. finally decide to do it, and then have a little pause to think about how to do the attack, then remember it involves taking a deep breath
3. inhale and maybe (Maybe!) face toward the enemy (why do they sometimes get stuck firing in the wrong direction! We can’t turn our pets manually, the pathing really needs to be cleaned up)
4. aaaaand zapzapzap
5. What? Oh he isn’t there anymore? Well hey, what do I care, your fight not mine

I really think that those wind-up animations should be removed or drastically shortened. Pets are our mechanic, and for the very mechanic of your class to not be an on demand, “when I hit the button it happens” thing?

I know they’re working on it, and I admit I have fewer F2 cancels than I used to. But it still is not, and never is on demand. And I still get those times where pets just will not do their moves.

^ lol yeah. Well my wolves are doing alright actually. they seem to be fast on their feet, attack fast, high rate of auto attacks, long range of lunge, with knock down and cripples. and when i use their howls, it takes them about 1 – 2 second for the skill to actually come out. That’s a bit slow but the wolves AI seemed to be more brilliant than some other ones. Same for devourers.

But yeah we have issues. But i’m glad to hear that you are a melee ranger too! I been running pure melee and having a blast and doing tons of dps, aoe and surviving super well. Better than i was with bows. With or without the SB nerf.