Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone I’m a relatively new player in guild wars 2, I use to play range ( archer/bow) classes in every mmo, around a week or so I managed to get my ranger to lvl 80 and started doing PvP, WvW and etc. And that my dear ranger friends is where the total kittenFEST began (sorry for my language) I cant seem to understand no matter how much i bash my head and think, why the hell does a class named Ranger absolutely SUCK at range fighting and has a garbage amount of damage, having a warrior or thief class managing to put out more dps with a bow / ranged weapon than a RANGER is an extremely crap situation which makes the whole class useless, why would u make a ranger class and focus it on greatswords and short range weapons while dealing a kitten amount of long range damage it just bothers me no matter how much I think of it, also I’ve been checking the ranger forums for quite a while to see how the game staff communicates with the playerbase, and to be honest from all the online games I’ve played I’ve never a game ignore his community as much as this one does, 0 replies, 0 considerations taken from forums and threads and obviously no attention to what the players want. I’d be very happy if I’m wrong, so if you have any arguements to prove me wrong with I’d accept them, but if you’re gonna bash me dont bother

I’m confused, most of the top ranger players use bow, it has good utility and a decent burst, (although I like jcbroe’s suggestion on hunters shot giving super speed)

Pvt frosty and shadow pass (both are top tier rangers who frequent the forums) both use longbow, hell been using a varient of shadow passes core ranger in pvp plat and won the last 4 games with top damage (just means I’m consistently landing my hits) and 5 games in unranked.
Won quite a few of 2v1s, with maybe a 1 death per match

Now with soulbeast with the unblockable and few damage modifiers it will probably do alot of damage

To be fair thief and warrior are more about setting up big bursts, while ranger is more machine gunning. The classes also have lots of constant damage modifiers to run, while area currently are only for 1 shots. But with soulb I was getting like 4.5k autos with lb. So… There’s that.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Needed-Buffs-Tweaks-2016/first

A thread I created before actually got a dev post and some of the changes/tweaks (especially SB) was taken into consideration.

This thread was a community effort by pvers and pvper rangers a like.

As far as dev responses go, don’t expect to see any. They are very rare. That’s not to say they don’t read the forums, because they do. They sometimes make changes based on player feedback if the changes make sense to them. Just remember, changes take time and have to fit withing their balance vision. But they do listen to player feedback, even if it doesn’t seem like it.

I just hope they dish out the option of an archer ranger that is viable in terms of damage, honestly even a slight LB attackspeed increase would do, its just so lackluster atm i cant dish out enough damage to even keep enemies under pressure, and I’ve also watched a lot of good ranger players they are all forced to roll into druid metabuilds, I personally detest the druid elite spec and spells since its support oriented, maybe all i want is a more selfish archer build that relies more on himself rather than teammates, I would even accept a spec where you remove ur pet to boost LB SB dmg and etc. Looking at the soulbeast spec thats coming up they’re trashing the ranged even more and forcing the ranger to go into melee which is so controversial with the profession, All in all ranger and druid should probably be 2 different professions since their style differs enormously, packing up an archer / druid spec is just paradoxal, rangers should be focused on staying out of range and dishing maximum dps with their ranged weapons, while druid is more of a nature type mage (shaman) that interferes with spirits nature and etc.

Thanks for sharing your time providing proper answers, I may be wrong about the condition LB is atm and most people might be happy with its current state, but its no denial that meta druid builds are being forced down our throats.

longbow is atrocious dont bother

From Wiktionary:
“ranger (plural rangers)
1. One who ranges; a rover.
2. A keeper, guardian, or soldier who ranges over a region (generally of wilderness) to protect the area or enforce the law.”

Could people just kittening stop arguing that Rangers should be awesome at range because of their name? Etymologically, it has nothing to do with being a ranged attacker, and that seems glaringly obvious to me. Jesus.

On another note, the Ranger SB+Axe/Torch (non-druid) condition build is amazing at DPS. I frequently carry Fractal groups with that build, easily dishing out the most damage of a properly geared and skilled group.

Faltharen.3586:

From Wiktionary:
“ranger (plural rangers)
1. One who ranges; a rover.
2. A keeper, guardian, or soldier who ranges over a region (generally of wilderness) to protect the area or enforce the law.”

Could people just kittening stop arguing that Rangers should be awesome at range because of their name? Etymologically, it has nothing to do with being a ranged attacker, and that seems glaringly obvious to me. Jesus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_

borya.2964:

Faltharen.3586:

From Wiktionary:
“ranger (plural rangers)
1. One who ranges; a rover.
2. A keeper, guardian, or soldier who ranges over a region (generally of wilderness) to protect the area or enforce the law.”

Could people just kittening stop arguing that Rangers should be awesome at range because of their name? Etymologically, it has nothing to do with being a ranged attacker, and that seems glaringly obvious to me. Jesus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_

Sure, but that’s still not what the word means. Still, that page doesn’t even specify that they have to be good at shooting people or staying at range. Rather, it points out a lot of the things that GW2 Rangers do: "Many are skilled in woodcraft, stealth, wilderness survival, beast-mastery, herbalism, tracking, and sometimes “nature magic”"

Faltharen.3586:

borya.2964:

Faltharen.3586:

From Wiktionary:
“ranger (plural rangers)
1. One who ranges; a rover.
2. A keeper, guardian, or soldier who ranges over a region (generally of wilderness) to protect the area or enforce the law.”

Could people just kittening stop arguing that Rangers should be awesome at range because of their name? Etymologically, it has nothing to do with being a ranged attacker, and that seems glaringly obvious to me. Jesus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_

Sure, but that’s still not what the word means. Still, that page doesn’t even specify that they have to be good at shooting people or staying at range. Rather, it points out a lot of the things that GW2 Rangers do: "Many are skilled in woodcraft, stealth, wilderness survival, beast-mastery, herbalism, tracking, and sometimes “nature magic”"

I know what is etymology, but thanks. I didn’t read the opening lacrymal thread, but the OP may talk about Ranger as the class archetype (and yes bows and ranged attacks are a part of it), no need to bring a dictionary here.

borya.2964:

Faltharen.3586:

borya.2964:

Faltharen.3586:

From Wiktionary:
“ranger (plural rangers)
1. One who ranges; a rover.
2. A keeper, guardian, or soldier who ranges over a region (generally of wilderness) to protect the area or enforce the law.”

Could people just kittening stop arguing that Rangers should be awesome at range because of their name? Etymologically, it has nothing to do with being a ranged attacker, and that seems glaringly obvious to me. Jesus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_

Sure, but that’s still not what the word means. Still, that page doesn’t even specify that they have to be good at shooting people or staying at range. Rather, it points out a lot of the things that GW2 Rangers do: "Many are skilled in woodcraft, stealth, wilderness survival, beast-mastery, herbalism, tracking, and sometimes “nature magic”"

I know what is etymology, but thanks. I didn’t read the opening lacrymal thread, but the OP may talk about Ranger as the class archetype (and yes bows and ranged attacks are a part of it), no need to bring a dictionary here.

I brought a dictionary because I keep seeing people whine about Rangers not being the best ranged attackers in the game, using the name as an argument, and I’m getting kind of tired of it.

GW2 is the first game I encountered, in which the devs are not listening to the community.
They don’t reply, they don’t discuss and it feels like any complain is just ignored.
I don’t want to be salty or just hate about the devs, but please think about anet’s refuse to rework anything broken.
Other huge games release a new patch very often with more little tweaks and fixes to bring a class/character into a specific position, instead of huge and gamechanging patches.
A big patch wouldn’t be that bad, if they would also do the necessary tweaks afterwards, which anet don’t do.
Less patches a year than fingers at your hand.
The only thing anet response really fast if players discover a farm method, the rest is mostly abandoned.
I love this game, I hate anet’s lazy and ignorant patch policy.

Faltharen.3586:

borya.2964:

Faltharen.3586:

borya.2964:

Faltharen.3586:

From Wiktionary:
“ranger (plural rangers)
1. One who ranges; a rover.
2. A keeper, guardian, or soldier who ranges over a region (generally of wilderness) to protect the area or enforce the law.”

Could people just kittening stop arguing that Rangers should be awesome at range because of their name? Etymologically, it has nothing to do with being a ranged attacker, and that seems glaringly obvious to me. Jesus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_

Sure, but that’s still not what the word means. Still, that page doesn’t even specify that they have to be good at shooting people or staying at range. Rather, it points out a lot of the things that GW2 Rangers do: "Many are skilled in woodcraft, stealth, wilderness survival, beast-mastery, herbalism, tracking, and sometimes “nature magic”"

I know what is etymology, but thanks. I didn’t read the opening lacrymal thread, but the OP may talk about Ranger as the class archetype (and yes bows and ranged attacks are a part of it), no need to bring a dictionary here.

I brought a dictionary because I keep seeing people whine about Rangers not being the best ranged attackers in the game, using the name as an argument, and I’m getting kind of tired of it.

Yes, i got it. But people usually whine about Ranger (as a name if you want) with the Ranger class archetype in mind (let’s say about ranged attacks and bows, cuz you know, it’s a part of the archetype) and usually some other people bring a dictionary argument to say that ranger, as a usual name, doesn’t mean range (attacks), which is pointless. The OP didn’t come in the Guild Wars 2 Ranger subforum to whine about US rangers or forest rangers, you know that, right ?

borya.2964:

Faltharen.3586:

borya.2964:

Faltharen.3586:

borya.2964:

Faltharen.3586:

From Wiktionary:
“ranger (plural rangers)
1. One who ranges; a rover.
2. A keeper, guardian, or soldier who ranges over a region (generally of wilderness) to protect the area or enforce the law.”

Could people just kittening stop arguing that Rangers should be awesome at range because of their name? Etymologically, it has nothing to do with being a ranged attacker, and that seems glaringly obvious to me. Jesus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_

Sure, but that’s still not what the word means. Still, that page doesn’t even specify that they have to be good at shooting people or staying at range. Rather, it points out a lot of the things that GW2 Rangers do: "Many are skilled in woodcraft, stealth, wilderness survival, beast-mastery, herbalism, tracking, and sometimes “nature magic”"

I know what is etymology, but thanks. I didn’t read the opening lacrymal thread, but the OP may talk about Ranger as the class archetype (and yes bows and ranged attacks are a part of it), no need to bring a dictionary here.

I brought a dictionary because I keep seeing people whine about Rangers not being the best ranged attackers in the game, using the name as an argument, and I’m getting kind of tired of it.

Yes, i got it. But people usually whine about Ranger (as a name if you want) with the Ranger class archetype in mind (let’s say about ranged attacks and bows, cuz you know, it’s a part of the archetype) and usually some other people bring a dictionary argument to say that ranger, as a usual name, doesn’t mean range (attacks), which is pointless. The OP didn’t come in the Guild Wars 2 Ranger subforum to whine about US rangers or forest rangers, you know that, right ?

Yeah, I guess you’re right. I’ll back off. Fighting with bows is definitely part of the ranger archetype. I do, however, really enjoy many of the melee weapons of Ranger in GW2 as well. They still feel very ranger-y to me, and I enjoy playing with them.

Warrost.4895:

GW2 is the first game I encountered, in which the devs are not listening to the community.
They don’t reply, they don’t discuss and it feels like any complain is just ignored.
I don’t want to be salty or just hate about the devs, but please think about anet’s refuse to rework anything broken.
Other huge games release a new patch very often with more little tweaks and fixes to bring a class/character into a specific position, instead of huge and gamechanging patches.
A big patch wouldn’t be that bad, if they would also do the necessary tweaks afterwards, which anet don’t do.
Less patches a year than fingers at your hand.
The only thing anet response really fast if players discover a farm method, the rest is mostly abandoned.
I love this game, I hate anet’s lazy and ignorant patch policy.

I’ts sad, but true. I am a developer as well, and as I there are a lots of problems. It seems they don’t have enough time to polish. There is no balance in pve, because there is no money on it.

Let’s take a look at pvp. Pvp is an e-sport material, so it needs to have very good balance or nobody will play it. But as they polising pvp, and btw using the same numbers and mechanins as on pve, they wont have enough time to do it on pve as well. The 2 system should be completly separated from each other (like in WoW). It’s radicoulus to chose between traits when one is only useful in pvp and the other is useful in pve. Because it’s not a choice. So as the mechanics, the numbers and multipliers too have to follow a separeted design in the two mode. They give every class the same medals and gear stat possibilities. Belive me, impossible to balance such a thing. Or if not impossible, it takes way to much money to manage it.

Balance was never exsisted and never will.

Pve balance:
- every class should be able to do same amount of single target dps (in 10% range from each other)
- every class should have a burst setup
- every class should have an aoe setup
- every class should have a viable support setup
- every class should have a viable tanky setup
- every class should have a viable condi and a viable power setup for dps-ing

And last one is the bigest joke by a ranger perspective. Our condi dps is over 30k, our power dps hardly hit 20k. What the kitten is going on ANet. Did you tried it? Did you played with it for more than a half hour?
Then let’s take a look on tempest….
But we have a viable healer option. Hmmm. Really. I didn’t like druid when came out, but the time i started to love it. BUT I chose ranger, because I WANTED TO BE A kittenING RANGED DPS, like in every other mmo. And here is the problem. I have to be kittening healer, because ANet wants it. And what if I dont want. Oh then forget raids. (Or go condi ranger which i don’t like, the ranger wasn’t condi for years.)

Consider, not everybody have enough time to change classes like panties. New character means map completion + bag slots + lots of other repetitive thing which I don’t want to do again and BUY AGAIN with real money.

SO PLEASE ANet, don’t change the class roles, we chose a class because we want to be that, what archetype provides. You are playing with us as you like and FORCING us to do things as you want. And how to solve this problem? Give us proper balance and then I don’t have to change my playstyle to stay viable. Until it wont get fixed, I’m out.

Faltharen.3586:

Yeah, I guess you’re right. I’ll back off. Fighting with bows is definitely part of the ranger archetype. I do, however, really enjoy many of the melee weapons of Ranger in GW2 as well. They still feel very ranger-y to me, and I enjoy playing with them.

You mean like with the sword or the broadsword? because most of our main hand weapons are ranged.

Maybe ranger is more than just an archer but obviously the class was designed with an strong ranged component in mind.

SB being able to reach as much as the LB ( which at the time needed a trait to reach 1500) or Axe bouncing between 3 targets were a good example.

So now that we have the hamrev and the upcoming Dead Eye, what about revisit the all the weapons to make them actually interesting with no-obscure and no-weird mechanics?

Examples: Correct me if i’m wrong GS seems bad because the autochain, the spamming Maul and the weird counterattack.
+ GS auto chain to remove the evade in the 1.5 seconds powerstab. If that attack, without changing the damage would be at the same speed as the rest of the chain (which is already slow) the perception of the GS would improve a lot.
+ Maul increase the CD to 12 seconds, increase damage x2.5 times, add 1 second knockdown if hits. Otherwise there is almost no point for the Hilt Bash to reset the CD and the skill lacks impact.
+ Counterattack: Remove the melee back kick as it goes to the maul (more useful that way). If we want to stop the block we already have the Crippling throw.

And there you have an actually interesting melee weapon.

Same for all the rest of the weapons, even the Longbow is not safe of the obscure and weird mechanics, like hunter shot, We are in combat but using an skill which stealth us…. Why doesn’t apply superspeed? Apply always superspeed and stealth if it hits.
Barrage could get so much better with simply applying 1.5 second chilled by impact. It doesn’t increase the DPS but still is amazing for Breakbars (Pve) and PvP in general.

Shortbow and Axe mainhand are pretty bad, without utility or active defense the ranger can use is just fodder meat for the enemies. Those weapons need a redesign to be actually good.

For the off hands dagger is awesomely bad, Axe is missing better usability: path of scars area being wider and the pull to work up to 900, affecting up to 5 enemies (now it’s 3) and whirling defence needs to remove the rooting effect and apply swiftness to the ranger.

Torch is so so. It’s good for static content but the ranger isn’t supposed to be static. As such mainhand weapons (sword and axe mainhand) needs one of their skills to root the target (maybe serpent strike to stun/knockdown and winters byte increased AoE chill time? ).

WarHorn is more of the same. The unblockable pet buff could be also applied to hunters call, affect up to 3 targets in an AoE area and teleport the pet to the target area as that way you could keep make the pet actually being able to keep up with the target.

I don’t know. I play mainly ranger because of the pet (although i’m longing the petless choice from the soulbeast if it’s done right and not a burden to be able to hide the pet when it’s not the smart choice) and because the other classes seems like spam-o-bot where you only need to hit the buttons off CD (except the power mesmer) . But is is true than other than AFK farming or casual openword things the ranger is more like an agony to play with such a disconnected and obscure mechanics.

The problem with Ranger is no one knows what it is supposed to do. Range? Not by nerfing all our weapons to 900 besides the LB. Melee? Not without stability.

Do we dance around like thieves? Not without stealth on more than just LB #3 and evades on MH sword.

What we do know, is still do this day Anet fears the pets. Leash nerf, stat nerf, etc. Even with SB half of the merged skills are awful because according to Irenio it’d be ‘way too powerful’ to give us non-terrible skills.

I think masochist is a good word for Ranger players. For me personally it’s more Stockholm Syndrome as I’ve played the game and class so long I don’t want to give it up…despite it’d being awful in 9/10 game modes.

GW2 has one of the lowest opportunity costs of re-rolling a new character/class so it’s not as if we are stuck with Ranger.

I’ve just been going back to other games and the Ranger in GW2 has the most options by far. Being able to switch to support, have proper Melee weapons, super easy pet management…

I think we’re projecting too much of what we want into the class instead of playing it as how it is now. Patches will push some aspects of the class to the forefront but that’s just the ebb and flow of it. I’d be quite bored if they didn’t switch it up for us once in a while.

It’s had its dark days in core, but even before this patch in PvP I would rate it a 7/10 and now as some top players like Frosty would put it, 9/10. It has fantastic sustain, burst heals, mobility, stealth, cleanses, and the only department it lacks in is damage, but it’s actually not all bad with a pet and some traits. Longbow is a control/burst weapon and sees much use in WvW and PvP, it’s a great weapon if you play to its strengths.

In PvE sure you can play Condi, but when I run with friends and they don’t mind it I pull out my Berserker gear.

The problem is we love ourselves too much and don’t love the class enough. Maybe change your thinking from how it doesn’t work for you, to how you can make it work?

Game design discussion aside, the OP doesn’t seem to know what “Ranger” means. Hint: it doesn’t come from “range” as in “distance”.

A bit of entomology lesson, straight from Wikipedia: "In medieval England, rangers were officials employed to “range” through the countryside providing law and order (often against poaching). Their duties were originally confined to seeing that the Forest Law was enforced in the outlands, or purlieus, of the royal forests. Their duties corresponded in some respects with that of a mounted Forester."

Ralkuth.1456:

GW2 has one of the lowest opportunity costs of re-rolling a new character/class so it’s not as if we are stuck with Ranger.

I’ve just been going back to other games and the Ranger in GW2 has the most options by far. Being able to switch to support, have proper Melee weapons, super easy pet management…

I think we’re projecting too much of what we want into the class instead of playing it as how it is now. Patches will push some aspects of the class to the forefront but that’s just the ebb and flow of it. I’d be quite bored if they didn’t switch it up for us once in a while.

It’s had its dark days in core, but even before this patch in PvP I would rate it a 7/10 and now as some top players like Frosty would put it, 9/10. It has fantastic sustain, burst heals, mobility, stealth, cleanses, and the only department it lacks in is damage, but it’s actually not all bad with a pet and some traits. Longbow is a control/burst weapon and sees much use in WvW and PvP, it’s a great weapon if you play to its strengths.

In PvE sure you can play Condi, but when I run with friends and they don’t mind it I pull out my Berserker gear.

The problem is we love ourselves too much and don’t love the class enough. Maybe change your thinking from how it doesn’t work for you, to how you can make it work?

I think you’ve answered that for everyone…play bunker druid. As that’s all the ‘top players’ in PvP are doing…bunker druid and hold points.

A one trick pony does not make a great class. All it does is get the class nerfed.

It has other negative effects, such as when SB comes out, no one is going to use it over bunker druid unless they like dying. Too much micromanagement for not enough gain; literally the only time to use it would be zerging in WvW so you don’t have the pet being a waste of space.

But yeah, ‘make it work’ is bound to annoy a lot of people. That’s just giving the dev team the excuse to leave barely functional (most of our weapons) to non-functional (spirits) things alone because we have basically become monks.

@Gotejjeken: I might sound like I’m eating my words, but I do think new ideas and suggestions, as well as the very occasional dissent regarding class balance, is good for the game because it tells the devs what we’re not having enough fun in.

At the same time, I don’t think only being happy when the class fits your fantasy is a good mindset, because 90% of your game time might be spent obsessed with “how it should have been” and sap your enthusiasm. We should see a class for what it is, even when we’re hoping for what it isn’t. Just be practical.

All things in balance, play down your expectations and you’ll have fun.

I agree with all of you, I probably had different expectations thus being dissapointed in how it really is, I guess I shouldnt bash longbow since its not actually bad at all maybe the core problem is ranger doesnt have much longbow skills to offer thus being considered a little weak, however i did try ranger and gave him a bit of time and I must say he is a good balance between dmg and survivability if played properly

Why there is no damage reduction for thief 1500 range weapon, but there is for ranger 1500 weapon?

Bratec.7136:

Why there is no damage reduction for thief 1500 range weapon, but there is for ranger 1500 weapon?

What do you mean?