Guild Wars 2

I’ve been considering starting a ranger but since I mainly do wvw and dungeons I wonder if it would be worth it to make the ranger my main.

Yes they are viable. All professions, builds, & gear are viable outside of 40+ FOTM. If players grief on a profession for anything outside of fotm 40+ they should probably not pug.

I just typed out something extremely long and accidentally deleted it all so now ill make it short.

Worth it, yes.
Best choice, no

Basically Ranger is an awesome class thats being held back by itself/game mechanics/ silly design. With a few notches turned the right way by ANET Ranger could easily be on par with Warrior. The sad truth is that we have a lot of issues and not enough strengfths, but we can pump out solid DPS and dont die easily. Youre going to hear a looooot of complaining about Ranger, but as much as we complain we all do like the class a lot. It is not unnoticed by ANET that the Ranger has flaws yet it has been ignored for a long… long time. You will most likely enjoy the class, just dont be like the rest of us and actually except any BUFFS from how it is now

U can play everything with a ranger if you are good enough . The problem is , a brainless warrior is more efficient then an average ranger . But u can compensate with enough skill

Viable, yes
Optimal, not even close. I have only ever seen rangers declined from a party, there is a reason there.

Sandpit.3467:

Viable, yes
Optimal, not even close. I have only ever seen rangers declined from a party, there is a reason there.

There is a reason indeed, but it isn’t a good one.

Best choice: yes. You can’t min/max a dungeon run without a ranger since no one else can buff with frost spirit and spotter.

Rangers have a few specific traits and skills that can maximize group damage and this allows exactly one range to be part of elite speed clearance groups. Other than that, rangers are poor in dungeons.

They have said that condition damage will be buffed in dungeons in the near future . If that happens ranger will be much more viable

Chokolata.1870:

They have said that condition damage will be buffed in dungeons in the near future . If that happens ranger will be much more viable

Wouldn’t the net meta change be zero though? Because other classes like Necros, Engies, and Warriors can already apply conditions better than Rangers?

actually , i dont think so . Necromancers and other classes are better in PvP with condition spam because they have an easier time both spamming and removing conditions , which is irrelevant in PvE as the AI is dumb . Perhaps rampager trapper with shortbow , etc etc

Ranger is a mid-weak condition applier so there isn’t going to be any help coming from that quarter.

Maybe ANet just needs to fix the bugs, pets and trait-line synergy before they think about changing other things. They should focus on getting rangers where they originally intended them but failed through bad implementation.

Did my dungeon master title on a ranger, no probs. Never got kicked out of or turned down from a dungeon group ever. Saved my teams from a wipe numerous times.

I play all the other classes too and yes they can do plenty of stuff better. That doesn’t mean the Ranger isn’t viable, you just have to play a bit better to make up for its shortcomings.

Zerk S/W, frost spirit, spotter, 30ish/30ish/0/10ish/0, jaguar: Yes.

Anything else: Not so much.

Since the AoE change to count block and evades and the pet health increase my pets have rarely been dying in recent dungeons.

Rhaps.8540:

Did my dungeon master title on a ranger, no probs. Never got kicked out of or turned down from a dungeon group ever. Saved my teams from a wipe numerous times.

I play all the other classes too and yes they can do plenty of stuff better. That doesn’t mean the Ranger isn’t viable, you just have to play a bit better to make up for its shortcomings.

I completely agree. However, in min/max speed groups, viable isn’t gonna cut it. As the player base shrinks, imo it’s shrinking, casuals are going to leave resulting in only the hard-core players remaining.

Chopps.5047:

Best choice: yes. You can’t min/max a dungeon run without a ranger since no one else can buff with frost spirit and spotter.

Though I like using those (even before I realized they were “meta” for PvE Rangers), it does feel “wrong” to me that the others builds are not as well-liked (probably due to this efficiency-minded group meta, which is fine but not my thing.) So in short, I wish Rangers were more welcome on their own, than just by adding those two wonderful additions to a DPS group-which is basically why you are saying they are the best for min/maxing.

I wish Ranger traits were moved around a bit for more effective build diversity (I play whatever, but realize some are theoretically “better” than the others.)

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Rhaps.8540:

Did my dungeon master title on a ranger, no probs. Never got kicked out of or turned down from a dungeon group ever. Saved my teams from a wipe numerous times.

I play all the other classes too and yes they can do plenty of stuff better. That doesn’t mean the Ranger isn’t viable, you just have to play a bit better to make up for its shortcomings.

I completely agree. However, in min/max speed groups, viable isn’t gonna cut it. As the player base shrinks, imo it’s shrinking, casuals are going to leave resulting in only the hard-core players remaining.

Though my opinion has no solid evidence either, I don’t think casuals are leaving, or more likely, some are leaving but may are replacing them. I think it’s the “hardcore” group that may end up leaving, as they may be too hardcore for this game (many elements to please them in the game for sure, but they will probably want more and more “hardcore-ness”, so to speak.) There’s plenty of casuals, though I imagine many of them avoid Dungeons and thus may seem “rare” in comparison with speedrun groups.

Yeah ofc my personal best party for dungeon is 2 ele 1 war 1 guard and 1 ranger

War for banner, ele for vulne, guard for proyectil reflection and ranger for frost spirit spotter and perma fury for all party

Rangers were not welcome in dungeon parties in the early day’s, so I didn’t bother with them.

And I haven’t bothered since then.

So the only dungeons I have done were for the story line.

I always get a kick out of posts that say “you just have to play better” because it forgets that a good player on a good class would play that much better. Sure, a really skilled player can make lemonade out of lemons but that doesn’t mean the class itself is typically viable or wanted in PvE.

What I find when I do PvE is that a ranger works better when the team is well thought thru versus more casual and therein lies a real problem.

Bombsaway.7198:

I always get a kick out of posts that say “you just have to play better” because it forgets that a good player on a good class would play that much better. Sure, a really skilled player can make lemonade out of lemons but that doesn’t mean the class itself is typically viable or wanted in PvE.

What I find when I do PvE is that a ranger works better when the team is well thought thru versus more casual and therein lies a real problem.

The op askied if it’s viable, you can do all the dungeons on a ranger no hassle so it is. Whether you get into speed runs easily or whether a warrior does it faster is aside the point. Viable just means capable of working successfully, feasable. Unless you’re saying that the ranger cannot do dungeons, which we all know to be untrue, then they are 100% viable.

Extremely viable, if zerk and in melee. I main a ranger, but if I pug, I will always ask bow rangers to leave the party, range is just not an option if you want to be useful (same goes for all the other professions as well). Also, between spotter and frost spirit, that is 10-11% ish increase in dps for each. So, viable? Of course it is, any zerk prof that knows how to play can be useful, just as any non-zerk warrior/guardian/mes (any class) can be complete garbage.

Zaseka.7182:

Extremely viable, if zerk and in melee. I main a ranger, but if I pug, I will always ask bow rangers to leave the party, range is just not an option if you want to be useful (same goes for all the other professions as well).

Longbow at long range does about 70% the DPS of sword. At melee range (0-500), longbow’s autoattack has a 0.5 damage coefficient vs. 0.9 at 900+ range. If you assume each of the 5 party members does equal damage, then the penalty for using longbow at melee range for Rapid Fire, then autoattack until you can swap back to sword is 5 / (4 + .7 * (4.5 * .5/.9 + 4.5) / 9) = 1.100 = 10% reduction in overall party damage vs if you just continued using sword.

That puts you into a real quandary if you want to switch to longbow to apply vulnerability (up to 10% bonus to overall party damage, depending on how much additional vulnerability the party is applying). You can fill the rest of the weapon swap timer with barrage, but its longer cooldown means you can only do that every other weapon swap. Hunter’s shot’s damage is even worse than longbow’s autoattack at melee range. And people don’t like point blank shot knocking mobs around (though it could be an option on bosses).

This is one of the problems with the ranger class as designed. They’ve put certain party-friendly damage-increasing abilities in locations where accessing them causes you to give up as much damage as you gain. Essentially we have the ability to maintain 10 stacks of vulnerability, but switching to longbow to do so causes the party to lose as much damage as it would gain from the vulnerability. For all practical purposes, the class doesn’t have the ability to maintain 10 stacks of vulnerability for the benefit of the party, even though it has a skill which does just that.

Also, between spotter and frost spirit, that is 10-11% ish increase in dps for each. So, viable? Of course it is, any zerk prof that knows how to play can be useful, just as any non-zerk warrior/guardian/mes (any class) can be complete garbage.

Traited frost spirit is a 7% increase in direct damage (doesn’t affect conditions). With the current mechanics, if it stays alive the full duration it’ll give its buff for 70 seconds out of 80 sec. So the average direct damage increase is 7% * 70 / 80 = 6.1% (though it’s front-loaded). That percentage goes down if the spirit dies early.

Spotter is 150 precision, which is 150/21 = 7.1% increase in crit chance.

If the average crit chance is 50% and crit damage is 100%, the damage increase is (1 + .571*1.5) / (1 + .5*1.5) = 1.608 = 6.1% average direct damage increase.

If the average crit chance is 70% and crit damage is 100%, the damage increase is (1 + .771*1.5) / (1 + .7*1.5) = 1.0519 = 5.2% average direct damage increase.

So overall there’s not much difference. If you’re going to use just one, I’d base which one you go with on whether you want to trait piercing arrows or long-range shot, or use the utility skill slot for something else.