Guild Wars 2

Not sure if this a complaint or a compliment, but I simply can’t get away from playing my bow Ranger. Especially for HoT. It’s my “go to” character for any difficult or challenging pve content. It’s the one I always end of turning to in the end because it seems to make the most pve content progress the fastest and easiest compared to any other class.

First some background: I’ve been playing since beta. I have 6 lvl 80s (war, thief, guard, mes, necro, and rang). I have 3 lvl 40+ chars I am leveling on the side as well (eng, ele, and rev). 4 of my 80’s are 100% world complete and story complete (excuding HoT and silverwastes). All my 80’s are exotic geared. I also tried mixing and maxing different specs (power, condi, tanky, etc) to see how each does in different situations. I’m not an expert meta-min maxer type, but I do check out the build threads and try ones out that show promise when I can. Why am I saying all this? I’m guess I’m just trying to communicate that I’ve made an effort to try and experience each class from 1-80, and see how to they play and find out which ones work best for me and my playstyle (mostly pve).

In my opinion, Ranger is hands down the “easiest” class to play. Now by easy, I’m not saying it’s a simplistic class, it has as much complexity as other classes if you build it that way, and can be very “swap-intensive” if you want. But in terms of “least swapping energy required”, a bow Ranger is so out of the box good it’s hard to justify playing any other class (for solo pve), other than out of boredom or curiosity. For extreme places like HoT, it’s without a doubt a much more enjoyable experience since Ranger has such an easier time getting around and getting in and out of combat. Having a pet to take aggro is such a huge boon it’s unbelievable. I’ve taken my other 80’s in Hot for a spin to see how they do and try out some of the new elite specs. And frankly it was painful on some (warrior beserker – bleh) and decent on others (thief, mes and guard – um yeah ok) and powerful on others (necro reaper – holy crap awesome). But frankly the effort and energy required to make the same progress is too demanding compared to bow ranger. You have to do so much more meta-gaming and weapon\stance\elite\shroud micro-management to move around and make progress.

With my Ranger I can almost go through most maps with just a single bow weapon and pet and survive\evade most situations. Ranger seems to have it all for the solo player: A bow to fight from range and stay out of trouble. Pets to tank and deal damage. A two-hander in case you get surrounded w an escape included. And with the new Druid spec (don’t even use staff), if things really get ugly you can heal back to full in seconds and STILL escape or keep fighting. And w Druids perm 33 movement speed? Amazing. It’s just too darn good to pass up for pve content roaming and exploring.

I’ll be honest here – my favorite character is the necro. I love the necro! But it’s slow range damage sucks and it’s pets are not as powerfull as the Ranger. I defintely love the reaper. And compared to the other classes, it plays second best in surviving in HoT for me. But I think melee classes are frankly at a disadvantage in HoT (and in Gw2 pve in general), regardless of the superior damage output. I am in no way asking for a nerf to Ranger – HELL NO! What I’m wondering though is why the other classes require so much more energy to progress through pve content? It just doesn’t seem the content is balanced right to me.

Does anyone else feel the same way or am I way off?

You are not. You are decently correct.

Ranger is the easiest class to play. The most difficult to master. That’s just who we are even though there’s not many of those who mastered the class – which makes the average of the “class” as weak. Because simply playing the class does not give the results as playing other classes does.
Mastering the class gives close to same of not better results.

The truth is it’s by far the easiest Open World class. In and out.

Not feeling the same way, but to each their own.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Not feeling the same way, but to each their own.

Just curious then, do you think another class has an easier time progressing through pve content and maps? Particularly HoT.

Can’t (really) answer that because it’s just me and my experience. I have been playing in the new zones with all professions and their elite specs and been progressing through it much easier with other classes. Again, to each their own.

Solo’d most champions on the new maps with my ranger . It’s the chilliest class to just play Open World after coming home from a long day. And it’s a lot of fun killing people in duels who just think rangers suck.

i agree with the post, though personally i think druid holds you back in open world pve content. compared to base ranger, BM/MM/SK, speccing druid costs a large amount of damage by dropping any of those lines and what it returns in the form of CA survivability isn’t ever needed. Maybe its useful for a group event to rescue other people but certainly not to support yourself. So Ranger excels at HoT open world pve, druid is just along for the ride.

honestly i think the reason many players struggle in HoT is because they’re full zerk. if they would just get some tougher jewelry they’d have a much more enjoyable experience. My Dire characters do fine and with a little bit of soldiers stats so do my former-zerk characters.

I agree that ranger are an easy class for solo roaming in pve, then again my experience of other classes are very limited (ranger & thief @ 80, then a bunch of low levels).

Wondrouswall.7169:

Can’t (really) answer that because it’s just me and my experience. I have been playing in the new zones with all professions and their elite specs and been progressing through it much easier with other classes. Again, to each their own.

Ghostwind was asking for your opinion, not fact.

@Ghostwind, I’m in a similar predicament to yourself, (although not as many hours put in) I love the reaper but why run that when i can run a LB Ranger and take on all encounters. Ranger is a very good solo class and has since gained some group utility. so overall its just a very good class.

But my experience has taught me that sometimes others find it easier to play a class they are most at home with. My mate loves the elementalist, he survives insanely well on that, I die quite fast lol. but that story is the reverse on the ranger.

That said, in all MMOs i gravitate towards the medium armour not-a-lot-of-magic classes (i.e. Rogue/hunter in wow, thief/ranger in gw2, even in skyrim i made a bowmaster)

I think its all about the mindset of the player and how engrossed they get in the class’s identity.

Zeoli.3402:

Ghostwind was asking for your opinion, not fact

Gave my opinion in my first response. He should have just ran with it. :P

Ghostwind.4380:

Wondrouswall.7169:

Not feeling the same way, but to each their own.

Just curious then, do you think another class has an easier time progressing through pve content and maps? Particularly HoT.

Reaper. I no longer have any fear on my Reaper, I just wade into mobs and beat them to death. I do die on occasion but it’s much more rare than any other class I have (and I have all but Rev and Guard). If things get too hot, I back off, let my minions handle melee and I go staff.

I kinda agree. Given my ranger still has 15 levels left, but it’s been one of the safer classes, even though I ger downed here and there in close combat as I have been using the axe/torch condi build. In contrast to my fresh 80 Guardian where I had zones that felt harder to survive (at least with my non-spectacular skills). MM Necro is also a really safe class thanks to Death Shroud as added survival form. It sometimes feels as if the minions are more powerful than I am, but that’s due to my afore-mentioned low-ish player skill <lol>.

Ranger is great for open world PvE because of longbow range and the pet tanking, like you said. However, that’s where it ends.

In group PvE content, the pet tends to die. At least, until the last update where they finally got damage reduction from AoE.

In PvP, pets are simply ignored since their pathing is bad and they can’t reliably hit moving targets. This makes the pet closer to a handicap, since the Ranger deals less damage for having a pet in the first place.

In WvW, pets are both ignored and simply die, making them as good as worthless. Pets can only reach a PvP-level of usefulness in very small scale encounters. However, the longbow range starts to shine in WvW, but also quickly loses effectiveness because of all the reflect spam in large battles.

Though I don’t usually bear bow (I drake bow… is that is a thing?) I simply just have the most fun on my ranger. No matter how many times I try to main another class, I always end up coming back to my ranger. It’s and enigmatic situation I’ve happily accepted much to my enjoyment.

personally I just find ranger more fun than anything else i’ve played. LB DH had me for a little while but it’s already going stale for me. What i’d like to do is find a strong way to gear my druid for raids/dungeons/open world stuff.

Ive always played the ranger/hunter type classes in every game Ive played. Just something about having a pet and using a bow. I chose these classes because they interest me, not because they may or may not be the easiest or whatever. Ive been playing this game since launch…. think I have between 30 and 40 level 80s. I have at least one of each class in full ascended. That being said the ranger is still my favorite even though we go through many changes all too often. As I said before, its more about the way it works for me than anything else.

I decided to level my revenant the old fashioned way by doing map completion. I have probably enjoyed that class more than any other aside from ranger. I think it may be my go to class every time they mess with rangers. Will probably hit 80 with it tonight.

My greatest wish for rangers is for them to fix the stupid pets or at least give us an option to not use them and transfer their damage potential back to the ranger. Most of the time I pick pets for their utility anyway since they are so dumb with their attacks.

I know there are better ways to play a ranger for certain things…but it may also be said that there are just better classes to play for those activities. To me, a ranger wields a bow and deals damage from afar and thats the way I play them. I dont really care if anyone likes it or not. I love my longbow ranger.

I dont feel the same, i hate tons more fun with full zerker thief, i love challenging 2 hits deaths, because i love to play hard. I did also play dragonhunter with no traits just bow and i went in to unlock stuff.

It’s nothing near hard as you described, it’s true that pets take agro, but thats just bad agro management of this game, that has nothing to do with ranger being easy, that’s a huge difference!

Easy? Well, i don’t know about that. I can certainly ravage the PvE AI with Ranger, but I’ve been using it since launch, and would hope this is the case.

As for open world PvE and the other classes, you are most likely using the wrong Armour. The difference between exotic and ascended Armour is significant, and if you want to beat the Hero Point challenges and other tough content solo, you need to move out of zerk meta. The other classes can survive just fine.

Ranger is, of course, the most enjoyable PVE profession, methinks. Less because it is “easy” and more because it is fun to do 2 things at once. Mesmer can do the same, in a somewhat different way, to be honest.

My thoughts:

My ranger is the first (and only) class I’ve taken into HoT, so I only can compare it to my bf’s experience with his thief, and I definitely had an easier time of it than he did. I agree with the idea of having some toughness or vitality on your gear to help with things, but I didn’t need it with my ranger, since tanky/1500 range made it less necessary.
I currently have 5 lvl 80s as well (ele, guard, mes, ranger, necro), and I do find that each excels in different situations. my guard is a monk build, and is my solo world completion character. My necro doesn’t die for anything (spite/soul reap/blood magic DS build), mesmer is a work in progress (easily the most difficult class to play imo), ele does WBs and pretty much whatever (cele build). Ranger is currently LB/GS assassin/berserker mix MM/SK/BM, but am wanting to branch out.

Traditional full zerker longbow ranger is pretty “easy” to play in HoT…if you know how to use it properly. If not you’re a wet noodle and will be stomped accordingly. I have played ranger for years in WvW and the instincts I honed there serve me well in HoT. Dodging for example is automatic and not something I need to think about. Same with hunter’s shot. It just happens when it needs to.

But for someone new to the class they may be in for a rude awakening in HoT, something I didn’t experience on my insta-80, no clue how to gear, play or spell the name of this thing revenant. So ranger is strong if you know how to play and because our pets can now tank in PVE. They still suck in WvW and are tough for anyone new to the class, as is ele. Druid sucks.

The necro is also very strong and is a tagging machine if you are grinding rep. I often charge into groups of HoT mobs in reaper shroud with little fear of being killed, not that I don’t get killed from time to time. Necros do not suck in WvW, and are very forgiving for players new to the class with great survival even with zerker builds. Unlike ranger I am new to the necro and don’t know how to play it properly but it doesn’t matter.

But as you say, the simplicity/familiarity of combat on the ranger has made it my default class for initially exploring the new maps and getting the mastery points and some of the achievements out of the way. Pet tanking is a huge advantage. After that comes the necro by which time I know the maps fairly well and can send my hopeless staff ele in.