(edited by bullseye.9573)
How is rangers nowadays ?
Here is my take:
1. WvWvW: Rangers are good, but have a very high skill cap. Meaning that it takes a lot of practice and tweaking of builds to achieve success. That said, rangers can do very, very well in WvW. WvW success is largely about situational awareness, knowing your strengths and weaknesses, as well as those of your opponents. One big disadvantage is that optimal roaming builds and optimal zerg-support builds require you to respec (the latter usually needs piercing arrow).
2. sPvP: I’ve only dabbled, but trap/condition bunker builds work well as can power/crit/evasion tanking. Others will have better knowledge about this.
3. PVE: Rangers are amazing. You can safely go anywhere, deal with multiple veterans at at time. When leveling, I would purposely try to get in over my head and see if I could pull through. PVE open world is very fun as a ranger.
4. Dungeons/events/raids: Never done a dungeon.
5. AOE: We are quite poor in this regards. Piercing arrow trait in Marksman line is a very good (but not great) trait. Other than that, our options are limited and pale in comparison to other classes.
Here is my take:
1. WvWvW: Rangers are good, but have a very high skill cap. Meaning that it takes a lot of practice and tweaking of builds to achieve success. That said, rangers can do very, very well in WvW. WvW success is largely about situational awareness, knowing your strengths and weaknesses, as well as those of your opponents. One big disadvantage is that optimal roaming builds and optimal zerg-support builds require you to respec (the latter usually needs piercing arrow).2. sPvP: I’ve only dabbled, but trap/condition bunker builds work well as can power/crit/evasion tanking. Others will have better knowledge about this.
3. PVE: Rangers are amazing. You can safely go anywhere, deal with multiple veterans at at time. When leveling, I would purposely try to get in over my head and see if I could pull through. PVE open world is very fun as a ranger.
4. Dungeons/events/raids: Never done a dungeon.
5. AOE: We are quite poor in this regards. Piercing arrow trait in Marksman line is a very good (but not great) trait. Other than that, our options are limited and pale in comparison to other classes.
We are bad in dungeons. It depends on the dungeon though. In CoF for example there are tons of AoE attacks and my pet always dies.
more thoughts about rangers
I’ll see if I can get a Vid for you tonight running CoF with my Ranger. It’s really not that bad if you manage your pet well. Sure the pet can do with some improvement, but its not the end of the world.
:) I love my Guardian. Played it since Launch. Barely touched it after I made a Ranger.
If you enjoy a challenge and like a class with a high skill lvl. Definitely play a Ranger. This is where the FUN is at
Sophia Theos Beast Master
[Fissure of Woe]
Rangers are great in dungeons. With the right setup (30 BM and signet of wild) your cats can facetank for a while— [Guard] is also good for this because it gives protection to the pet, as well as the 2 sec protection on dodge roll trait. If you don’t like running that build because you have to swap too often / don’t want to make custom keybindings / don’t like so much pet micro, you can run devourers and Rampage as One which is a decent might stacking combo. Devourers are tough as nails and ranged.
With pets I will go nuts on my first pet right? I will push it to the edge. Sometimes I make a mistake and let the pet die. But I try to swap before that. So assuming I got off the swap, I immediately call the next pet back and keep it safe. I go ranged, I dodge, I kite. I use the pet if I have to. Once the Cd is low I go nuts with the pet again. You just don’t wan to lose both pets on CD and you really shouldn’t let this happen.
In the higher level Ascalonian fractal, rangers will use spirit of nature to revive NPCs, crucial to the success of the fight. Rangers will apply barrage cripple to advancing trash mobs and give a powerful freeze to the boss via frost trap. In the underwater fractal, rangers are fantastic because of great underwater power and healing. They’re great in TA for the healing spring 50% uptime (deadly poison removal), and the axe ricochet quickly and cleanly clears flowers.
But ya on that last cof boss, it’s not a bad idea to make use of signet of stone, signet of the wild, natural healing, etc. these things are all important whenever you face a foe with lots of big aoes, like Turmaine in CM or the Flame Effigy in CoF or Lupi in Arah.
Also I should note that pet pathing seems to have been improved such that pets do a better job standing on the ranger when nearby aoe attacks. There was never a documented change in patch notes though.