Guild Wars 2

So I have been playing my ranger almost since launch. First 80 was a guardian and then the ranger, also took some time to get a necro to 80. I am no expert but I feel that I have a handle on most situations. I’m running a power/condi build, S/D and A/T. I know Axe, YUCK. But I have built around camp flipping/yaks so axe works for me.

My spec is pretty fluid so if I run in a group or zerg I can switch a few traits and equip SB or LB for at least be more support.

I have fought all classes solo and while I’m not a duelist I have felt that I gave as good as I got. Mesmer’s give me fits. Thieves don’t really bother me much since there are so many played badly, the good ones are tough. But I feel any well played class can be tough.

Today I got rocked by engineer. This guy was bombing me from max range. Sure with the LB I could hurt him but he would just skip out of range and jump back and bomb away. If I got close I was rooted for what seemed like an eternity. When I finally managed to beat him, after several tries it was from an evade of his snares and I felt a missed rotation on his part.

Like many have said it seems that every class does what we can do way better. I always took the point that people were frustrated and just venting. Like I am now. I enjoy the flexibility we have to change weps and pets to alter our attacks but it just seem like sometimes it’s not enough. But why do we have to be kitten perfect almost all of the time. I enjoy the fact that most people see a ranger and think easy kill and then get surprised when its not as easy as they though.

Why does every fight have be a near perfect performance?

Why does my pet stop to stand there looking at me in the middle of a fight??

Sry for the rant just a ranger blowing off some steam.

Rangers have to adapt. It’s what we’re good at, especially as all our good rangers have gone away, survival of the fittest and all that.

Anyway, engineers are pretty tough matches for anyone. Due to their variety of skills they are the hardest class to counter well for anyone imo. If he’s using grenades then remember that they don’t hit very hard at all, infact they only unload conditions due to how low their raw damage is 90% of the time. Pressure is key here, you want to lock him down somehow and get into melee range, torch 4 and 5 would help with that.

Rooted for an eternity, sounds about right. With the new immobilize stacking you can get rooted forever, but note you can also do the same to him. If you root him with a spider and then use entangle he gets 2 stacks on him, and entangle pulses every second so shucks for him he can’t cleanse it :p (Technically he could cleanse the entangle, still be stuck with spider f2 then another entangle pulses, of course he could just destroy the roots but…)

Also engineers that use grenades generally have bad mobility, if he was bombing you from a long distance just try and run, engies only have a few good gap closers like rocket boots but that is mainly used with bomb builds for the smoke field.

Mesmers should be really easy for you too, but I come from playing a mesmer before ranger. Just dodge/evade the phantasms and stick to him with your sword auto, he’ll run under pressure then you can burn him, mesmers atm have rubbish condi cleanse.

If ranger pets would just work right, flawless fighting from the ranger wouldn’t be necessary. It really kittens me off when easily 1/2 the time (or more) the F2 skill doesn’t work. And whether it works or not, the CD kicks off. That’s insult upon injury. /facepalm!

Give me working F2 functionality and I’ll be in heaven! Imagine if you hit F2 and your brown bear would stop where he’s at and 100% of the time (w/o fail) do his condition removing skill. Or the fern hound’s heal worked when you needed it as you’re running for your life and need some regen johnny on the spot. As it is now, I have to stop running, call him to me with F3, wait for him to stop moving around, then hit F2 and I got about a 50/50 chance of having his heal ability actually work. Oh yeah, if I got an enemy targeted, he runs to the enemy then tries doing his heal skill. /facepalm again! Forget about getting healed on the run as I’m trying to survive.

Anet, please fix this! Pets are an abomination! We cant stow them for good, they have X percent (20% or more) of our offense, their F2 skills are hit or miss (mostly miss), their AI is slow, and their range is too small, etc.

armorcrafter.5934:

I have fought all classes solo and while I’m not a duelist I have felt that I gave as good as I got. Mesmer’s give me fits. Thieves don’t really bother me much since there are so many played badly, the good ones are tough. But I feel any well played class can be tough.

Words of wisdom, unfortunately not uttered much on these forums.. No matter what class you encounter, it’s the person behind his computer that is controlling it.. Skills are linked to a player, not to a class..

armorcrafter.5934:

Today I got rocked by engineer. This guy was bombing me from max range. Sure with the LB I could hurt him but he would just skip out of range and jump back and bomb away. If I got close I was rooted for what seemed like an eternity. When I finally managed to beat him, after several tries it was from an evade of his snares and I felt a missed rotation on his part.

As mentioned above: Engineers can be quite hard when you encounter them, due to their enormous skill variety at hand. Of course, the fact that you were melee-equipped meant that you needed to get in close range, while the engi was having fun at range.. You said it yourself: Should you have LB, you’d be able to hurt him.. (Btw, LB#3, go stealth, sneak up to him and do your (melee) mayhem)

armorcrafter.5934:

But why do we have to be kitten perfect almost all of the time. I enjoy the fact that most people see a ranger and think easy kill and then get surprised when its not as easy as they though.

Ranger is one of the hardest classes to play (decently). And that’s the biggest reward it can ever give me: Every time I go for the stomp in 1v1 of 1v2, I am darn proud, knowing I performed almost perfect. We have very little margin for error comparing to (the other extreme) a thief: If a thief screws up his chain, he’ll (most of the time) be able to stealth out of the fight and reset, to retry afterwards.. If you make an error as a ranger, you can expect to meet the Repairs dude after..

armorcrafter.5934:

Why does every fight have be a near perfect performance?

As stated above: One of the hardest classes to play, perfection is needed..

armorcrafter.5934:

Why does my pet stop to stand there looking at me in the middle of a fight??

Your pet looks up to you, of course!
No, seriously, this is indeed something I also dare to curse on: The pet AI really needs some more tweaking..

armorcrafter.5934:

Sry for the rant just a ranger blowing off some steam.

No problem at all.. I’d rather see a good ranger rant about and carry on afterwards with his ranger then I’d see a ranger abandon his class because he feels like it gets no(t enough) love..

Wise words from Tribio, coincidentally one of my servers better rangers. Seriously, don’t give up, we all struggle sometimes but keep on fighting. Also, I too love the feeling of killing people that claim us as easy kills. A warrior engaged me today with his healing signet and hammer. I cackled inside as I killed him.

I feel the same way…
Requiring to play at near perfection only to come up slightly ahead in the longterm is not only exhausting but demotivating. I barely have the heart to log on anymore to play pvp because of it.

I think it greatly depends on what you are running in a fight. A condi/regen tank has a far higher margin of error and success rate than a power build that is due to factors like poor sustain outside of a focused build and lack of spike.

I must admit that it does feel good when I do kill someone with a power build though half because I had to give %110 and half because I know it likely bugs the crap out of the other person that they lost to a ranger in WvW lol.

I don’t always dance on my opponent’s corpse.
But when I do, it’s because I beat you with a power ranger and I didn’t even activate RaO.