Guild Wars 2

Or is melee a viable thing?

I want to like ranger, but I’m not sure I like only being ranged all of the time.

It’s Obvious, Melee is the Future for this class. No more Range.

The sword is the Rangers best weapon, because it has cripple on auto attack, which allows your pet to hit consistently. If you use any of the other weapons, you have to rely on pet, survival, or traps skills, to snare your foe. Unless you only play PvE, in which case you can pretty much do whatever you want.

Actually ranger is even better in melee than in range.
Sword is the weapon with the highest DPS in our arsenal, Greatsword also cause a good damage and gives nice utilities.

The sword is probably the highest DPS weapon for the ranger. If you are one of the minority who can look past the auto-attack root (it’s a total deal breaker for most people) or you’re willing to spam the one key and turn off auto-attack (great game design there devs) it will probably serve you well.

Honestly, the warrior great sword an axe will give you far less trouble with their auto attacks, they will do higher damage, they are easier to use and abuse and the general survivability and utility choices of the class are superior to the ranger. If you really wanted to go melee, you’re probably better off with a warrior. They have all the tools you would want without the problems of the ranger.

If you must go melee on a ranger, sword is good DPS if you can handle the root and dodging difficulties and the great sword has decent blocks, stuns and evades, but don’t expect either to compete with a warrior, especially the latter.

I see more ranger melee in pve than I do in pvp. In pvp, sword/greatsword tend to be used more for their utility skills. Very few players in the meta run some kind of zerker melee build and when they do it’s thief or warrior, not ranger. I can imagine some kind of team strategy where a zerker player does the killing but is protected by the team who also CC and apply conditions for him. But yeah, solo, unless you’re playing a thief, I just don’t recommend a pure damage melee spec in pvp. You’ll get mopped across the floor.

But in pve you’ll get the most damage out of zerk/melee. My pve build is generally 20/20/0/0/30 with zerk gear and ranger runes with sword/warhorn and honed axes (dual) with cats (stalker/jaguar) but sometimes I’ll go 20/5/15/0/30 with shortbow instead of axes, like in any dungeon that’s challenging (arah or TA come to mind). In arah, you’re going to want some toughness so maybe swap out zerk trinkets for knights during the lupi fight because you will probably die a lot, especially if you don’t practice a lot or if you’re new.

I do pretty well, in general. But if you’re into dungeons, the consensus is that ranger might not be your class. Unless you’re really into the mechanic of ranger, you might have more fun using another profession in pve for the time being, at least until ANET reworks the dungeon content. That said, any dungeon is currently easy enough (with practice) such that any team composition can win.

I recently switched from Axe+Warhorn&Torch to include a sword it goes with the torch… and thus run Axe+Warhorn, Sword&Torch …. this seems to work quite well, though i did switch off the auto attack … The Axe Warhorn combo is used to be midrange and more ‘support’ while the sword+torch is to just get in there and bash around.

I would say it works just fine, but then again, what do you want to do? this is all written from a PvE perspective and may not be worth the pixels it’s displayed with when it comes to WvW or sPvP …

Arghore.8340:

I recently switched from Axe+Warhorn&Torch to include a sword it goes with the torch… and thus run Axe+Warhorn, Sword&Torch …. this seems to work quite well, though i did switch off the auto attack … The Axe Warhorn combo is used to be midrange and more ‘support’ while the sword+torch is to just get in there and bash around.

I would say it works just fine, but then again, what do you want to do? this is all written from a PvE perspective and may not be worth the pixels it’s displayed with when it comes to WvW or sPvP …

I like building a flame aura with a swoop out of bonfire. If anyone comes up with a good flame aura might stacking build, post it because I’ve been wondering about that for a while. It seems like ranger has access to two flame fields (although one is a trap and has to be triggered by an enemy) and two leaps. You could hornets sting, for example, drop bonfire, and then monarchs leap back into battle with a flame aura. I could imagine many stacks of might forming in a chaotic wvw fight so the build would probably call for high toughness and vitality and involve boon duration and utilities like protect me.

Most peoples mindsets are stuck on range. For me personally, it’s a playstyle choice, and then I use my sword/torch off hand as a defensive set or when I want to flame on.

I never felt it was advantageous to mob dive, and would rather sit at a distance away from somebody and pick at them (in guild wars 1 I could punish them with interrupts and provide much more group support by disabling key skills, something I am sad to see removed). However, guild wars 2, even though claiming to be a team game, emphasizes solo damage output and solo skirmishes much more than guild wars 1 ever did.
So while I love the ranged concept, I am disheartened at what it isn’t, and a masochist for continuing to build primarily around bow gameplay despite the lack of complimentary utilities and traits (traits only in comparison to other traits available to other classes for their ranged weapons).

I seem to be moving more and more towards melee (primarily PvE), and so far its going well for me. Your mileage may vary, depending on build and playstyle, and what part of the game you take part in.

I think the problems come from rangers having not having enough skills available to influence a melee while they are at range. Too many abilities are static and in the wrong place (traps, spirits). Activated pet abilities are often too weak/slow.