Guild Wars 2

I can’t be the only person who

A) is successful with ranger, found pets make it easy to do a ton of things in game, and likes the awesome combination of melee stickiness and evasion the 1h sword provides? Guys, the 1h sword is one of the most evasive, maneuverable weapons in the game and I’m sick of people who don’t understand it coming here to the forums trying to get the mechanic changed. Maybe it needs tweaks but it’s a good mechanic, no doubt.

B) likes cooldowns on pets because that retains balance. Umm, instant 5 stacks of AoE might from cat? Probably not fair.

C) knows that a ranger is someone who explores, like Indiana Jones wielding a torch or sword, as well as bow (warrior longbow isn’t necessarily better, I believe that is a myth and the bow plays a different role in the ranger’s hands). Who likes the ranger class and thinks it’s incredibly exciting and anyone who thinks anyone who says it is god awful or boring must be a fool?

D) Knows that pets sometimes don’t “lick wounds” when downed because the pet is dead? That’s the only time this happens. Remember, your pet can’t perform skills when it has lost all health. This is fair…if people want to kill the pet to stop it from healing, thats a valid game mechanic

E) knows how to build pets that don’t die (and I don’t usually play bears), by proper traiting and micro. If you run glass, always put pet on avoid combat! Then order to attack targets for precision strikes. If you’re glass and let your pet roam then complain when it dies, i have no sympathy for you

F) doesn’t want ANET to dumb down the class or change it significantly

G) has successfully run pure spirits and facerolled level 20 fractals
. Spirits do not suck, you just have to trait for it. Don’t tell me Nature Magic traits suck either because that’s a load of “kitten”. You can’t just trait marksmanship and skirmishing then try to run spirits (probably using them incorrectly) and then wonder why thy die. I have no sympathy for that. I have groups that love it when I bust out spirits because they know they get protection on hit thats on a short cooldown.

H) Likes the way pets behave in general. If you want it to stay, etc, use the shouts. Believe me, more control over pets will break the game when rangers like me rock the battlefield. Just last night I held off 10 people by myself long enough for help to arrive by choking them at a bridge and using my AoEs and Barrage. If I had more power over my pet, the game would be too easy

I) don’t tell me rangers are bad when I routinely earned 500k EXP in dubs without death, ambitious warriors and thieves routinely fall beneath my blade

J) does not use “combat mode” because it actually makes the game more difficult? I run a widow keyboard and corsair m90 mouse and spent about 8 hours tweaking my keybindings. I never have any issues with control, have seen combat mode and understands that it would make me worse, and, by the way, I speed run jumping puzzles, which I define as “holding run 95% of the way through”. I also like the way ground targeting works for a variety of reasons I won’t go into now.

I realize this may be controversial and a lot of beginners might disagree with me. However, I’m an old competitive gamer who’s spent his entire life playing games like this—all the way back to Cosmic Encounter. To give you an idea of how much I like ranger in GW2, I have 1000 hours on my ranger and haven’t even leveled another class passed 60. I am running ~20 fractals and completed my monthly dubs slayings before the first week of the month was up.

Don’t sit here and tell me rangers need this or that. You guys need to quit wasting your time with combat mode and actually get good hardware and set up keybindings. Stop going on here and trying to ruin this class for everyone that likes it. And I don’t want rangers to be able to equip staff.

Congratulations man. I have done some of these things, I didn’t know D meant the pet was dead. But you are a very skilled ranger. Nautika, spirits can move with you with traiting btw. Spirits were hard to work for me though.

As a BM ranger I think pets need work. Most of your experience seems to be in pve. I only pvp/wvw. I get really annoyed at pets uptime on target. If a player target runs in a slight circle with no speed increases they can avoid all of our pets damage. The exception to this is when I land my slow when off cd. With a good chunk of our damage rolled into our pets when speced for them, I expect my pet to be able to have uptime on a target that isnt actively dodging or increasing their combat speed. My slows and immobilizes should only need to be used to counter my targets speed increases.

The only change I would like to see is my pet reliably hitting targets that arent dodging or increasing their combat speed. I am fine with countering speed cds with my speed reducing cds. That is 100% balanced but simply running in a circle shouldn’t stop my pet from attacking while my stuffs on cd.

While I agree with you on the sword mechanics some of what you say is well just wrong.

While pets might not need more control the AI needs some serious tweaking not fun when I need my pet and the idiot is off attacking something I did not tell it to attack.

We need better damage the SB and LB both need damage tweaks and perhaps even skill changes.

Spirits do suck they need to be anchored to you and move with you and not die to a single hit like they do now.

No, you’re not the only one. But you are one of the very few who need to gloat how awesome their ranger is even when the devs themselves have said ranger needs some serious help in multiple areas.

Nautika.5376:

While I agree with you on the sword mechanics some of what you say is well just wrong.

While pets might not need more control the AI needs some serious tweaking not fun when I need my pet and the idiot is off attacking something I did not tell it to attack.

We need better damage the SB and LB both need damage tweaks and perhaps even skill changes.

Spirits do suck they need to be anchored to you and move with you and not die to a single hit like they do now.

I never said pet AI didn’t need work. I’m not sure where you got that from. I think this fact is pretty well known. For the record, my background is wvw and pve. Back when I played Halo 2 competitively (locally) I hater King of the Hill. I still do so that’s why I avoid spvp.

If you think spirits suck, then I can’t take what you say seriously. I run spirit support in wvw and dungeons all the time and we do fantastic. I doubt you’ve tried spirits or used proper runes/sigils/traits.

Boomstin.3460:

No, you’re not the only one. But you are one of the very few who need to gloat how awesome their ranger is even when the devs themselves have said ranger needs some serious help in multiple areas.

I’m not gloating. This is a counterweight to the whiners.

Ranger is a easy-to-start but hard-to-master class in my opinion. You have to have deep understanding about the class to open the door of glory, and even after you master it, you can be a tough guy but still not the best one coz ranger don’t have the easy GOD mode like some other classes. By spending same efforts on other classes you might get quicker/better result. Investment VS benefit unbalance is the real reason why many ppl complain.

YourOwnFear.2743:

As a BM ranger I think pets need work. Most of your experience seems to be in pve. I only pvp/wvw. I get really annoyed at pets uptime on target. If a player target runs in a slight circle with no speed increases they can avoid all of our pets damage. The exception to this is when I land my slow when off cd. With a good chunk of our damage rolled into our pets when speced for them, I expect my pet to be able to have uptime on a target that isnt actively dodging or increasing their combat speed. My slows and immobilizes should only need to be used to counter my targets speed increases.

The only change I would like to see is my pet reliably hitting targets that arent dodging or increasing their combat speed. I am fine with countering speed cds with my speed reducing cds. That is 100% balanced but simply running in a circle shouldn’t stop my pet from attacking while my stuffs on cd.

This is a known bug with pets that I didn’t even mention in the post because it’s so well documented. I’m not sure why you guys keep bringing it up to disagree with me. Where are you reading this? I didn’t mention pet AI.

Of course everyone wants this fixed. But this point is totally irrelevant and not the main thrust of my post.

Chopps.5047:

YourOwnFear.2743:

As a BM ranger I think pets need work. Most of your experience seems to be in pve. I only pvp/wvw. I get really annoyed at pets uptime on target. If a player target runs in a slight circle with no speed increases they can avoid all of our pets damage. The exception to this is when I land my slow when off cd. With a good chunk of our damage rolled into our pets when speced for them, I expect my pet to be able to have uptime on a target that isnt actively dodging or increasing their combat speed. My slows and immobilizes should only need to be used to counter my targets speed increases.

The only change I would like to see is my pet reliably hitting targets that arent dodging or increasing their combat speed. I am fine with countering speed cds with my speed reducing cds. That is 100% balanced but simply running in a circle shouldn’t stop my pet from attacking while my stuffs on cd.

This is a known bug with pets that I didn’t even mention in the post because it’s so well documented. I’m not sure why you guys keep bringing it up to disagree with me. Where are you reading this? I didn’t mention pet AI.

Of course everyone wants this fixed. But this point is totally irrelevant and not the main thrust of my post.

It seemed to me that you only had praises for rangers in your post and I wanted to post a glaring problem I had with rangers that does need to be fixed. Your post made you seem like you wanted rangers to stay as it is. I didnt quote you because I was only posting something in general that kind of ran counter to the theme of your post and not directly arguing something that you said.

Btw if you agree you with me, it would have sounded nicer on your end to quote me and say agree. The only direct mention to you I made was that you seemed like you had most your experience in pve.

You are not the only one. I’ve basically stopped posting on these forums because any attempt to get the can’t play crew to try anything that works is met with a chorus of swift and all-encompassing denial. Even positive changes are respun as negative in these forums. I honestly don’t understand the attitude. It boggles the mind.

I will admit that there is a higher learning curve on the ranger than most of the other classes, but once you get there it’s easy to take out most other profs regardless of build. Do I get outplayed sometimes? Yep. I’m old enough that my reflexes aren’t as sharp as the younger guys, but I compensate for it by building to my strengths.

Oh, and I completely agree with you on keybindings. The defaults are as bad as they are in every MMO, and should be changed immediately. A good ranger can control their pet well. Put those keys somewhere in easy reach and use them. Function keys are for chumps and suckers. :P

I’ve been able to get spirits to work perfectly… without traiting… just need to place them properly.

You are not the only one, I for one run a non FoTM spec/setup and enjoy playing my Ranger quite a bit. Have plenty of success in PvE and WvWvW…

Instead of asking for what you don’t have….try and make the best of what you DO have….learn the nuances and limitations of your class. accentuate the positive and minimize the negative and simply go have fun….after all, having fun is the end goal, AMIRIGHT?

Quote from a guildie who plays a Guardian “I don’t see why everyone on the Ranger boards cries so much about the class. you don’t seem to have any issues from my perspective”

….and I run LB/SB. =/

I agree with many of the things you’ve said, but yes we do need work to get rid of some of the pointless frustrations mostly to do with pets. I run a non-fotM spec.

The endless forum whine is just as frustrating as the pets though I agree, but then welcome to MMOs in the 21st century. The warrior forum is often whiny as well.

Love my ranger, but I disagree a little on pets. I think they’re too susceptible to AoE without a real effective way to counter it. I don’t want to be able to ignore my pet and have it survive, but I don’t want to have to micro-manage it, either. If I want to micro-manage, I’ll play dwarf fortress.

That and a better pet management interface. I mean the big one that has all your pets in it. I’m OK with the F1-F4 thing, except you should see boons and conditions on pets above that little interface. Unless there is a way to show it without highlighting the pet and I’m just missing it.

Every other class has its own role and its own special thing (Necros condition damage, minions and lifeforce, guardians very defensive and supportive and they get virtues, thieves insane burst damage and stealth, warriors build adrenaline and release powerful attacks) and what do we get? A pet that can’t hit a moving target, doesn’t res and takes ages to use a skill (Lick wounds doesn’t work btw; even when the pet is alive. Tested).

I tried going full defense only to find out that thieves still kill me before I’m no longer a stone. Still doesn’t feel like a bunker at all. Pardon? I have to get lightning reflexes, get a shortbow and greatsword and use protect me with a bear pet in order to counter thieves that turn you into stone? Well, if in order for a class to be closer to the same level as other classes it has to change to this specific 1 build, then it’s not working.

I tried going beastmaster, even though this was one of the most successful builds I’ve seen so far in sPvP as a ranger, it just doesn’t cut it because pet rarely hits a fly AND if you use one of the powerful ones (feline or bird) it’s too squishy. One way to get around this is to keep snaring your opponent (Sigil of superior ice is a good choice), which is why this was one of the most successful builds so far but you can’t really say the ranger has reliable snares. Most snares last for 2 seconds and if you miss that, you get no damage output from your pet.

I tried going glass cannon. Turns out it’s just the glass. Why? Well, let’s see, if you want to burst people down fast then you are going to have to go for sword, greatsword or shortbow. Sword roots you in place; bad idea for a glass cannon. Greatsword got nurfed so it’s not a cannon and shortbow is based on conditions. Longbow? Too slow and rarely hits from afar.

I tried going support. 30 points in nature magic, spirits, tried all combinations of supportive runes with warhorn and shortbow/longbow (for interrupts) and healing spring. It worked fine, but then I found out elementalists and guardians do one hell of a stronger support than the ranger. Plus, spirits die too easily even when traited.

I tried going condition stacker. Changed runes to appropriate ones and got the Entangle elite skill. It was more than alright at first but then I found out that the elite skill has a too noticeable animation (Experience players dodge it 100%) AND it’s not affected by condition damage though stated otherwise.

Most viable builds so far is the condition stacker and the beastmaster.

I’m mostly happy with my ranger, but they do need some tweaks, spirits is one area, even trained they simply die too quickly, and the activated abilities are buggy and unreliable. I think Anet needs to decide what they want them to be and properly implement that concept… Right now they are just either ignorant of the issues or choosing not to make design choices.

This is bad news to players when something so obvious warrants no attention.

Silvanus.5821:

I tried going glass cannon. Turns out it’s just the glass. Why? Well, let’s see, if you want to burst people down fast then you are going to have to go for sword, greatsword or shortbow. Sword roots you in place; bad idea for a glass cannon. Greatsword got nurfed so it’s not a cannon and shortbow is based on conditions. Longbow? Too slow and rarely hits from afar.

Hate to break it to you, kid, but Short Bow is good even as a straight non-condition weapon. Don’t get distracted by the flanking Bleed and the Poison Volley; Short Bow Berzerker Builds out DPS a pure Longbow one.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/78402-100-crit-pve-ranger-work-in-progress/

In regards to the OP, probably any class is viable if you are a skilled key-binder. I think rangers, and their pets, require a greater degree of micro-managing than other classes which leads to a greater distinction between the quick and the not-so-quick. If your reaction time is slow, or you can’t handle multiples of key-binds, don’t expect to be very good. Like me. :P

I love my ranger. I’m halfway to 80 right now and having a blast. It’s a nice change of pace from my main. It also feels familiar to me as I’ve played many ranger type classes in MMOs through the years.
Since my ranger isn’t level 80 yet she doesn’t have a lot of experience with dungeons or PVP, but I really haven’t run into anything that puts me off. My pets, a Fern Hound and Reef Drake, do rather well. They don’t run off on their own and aggro additional mobs and they don’t die quickly.
I love both the short bow and the long bow, and despite my lack of love for melee I think the great sword is fun too.
As for Spirits, I haven’t tried any yet. I feel like other traits are more beneficial for leveling right now, but I plan on trying them out soon enough.

i love my ranger (and dont think its UP or needs an overhaul)

but i do hate spirits… and do wish theyd add some kind of pet evade (i micromanage alot; but sometimes its impossible to call them back before a heavy hitting attack)

and have had lick wounds fail on slopes even when my pet was still alive (and i believe lick wounds revives your pet anyway)

deepwinter.9015:

Silvanus.5821:

I tried going glass cannon. Turns out it’s just the glass. Why? Well, let’s see, if you want to burst people down fast then you are going to have to go for sword, greatsword or shortbow. Sword roots you in place; bad idea for a glass cannon. Greatsword got nurfed so it’s not a cannon and shortbow is based on conditions. Longbow? Too slow and rarely hits from afar.

Hate to break it to you, kid, but Short Bow is good even as a straight non-condition weapon. Don’t get distracted by the flanking Bleed and the Poison Volley; Short Bow Berzerker Builds out DPS a pure Longbow one.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/78402-100-crit-pve-ranger-work-in-progress/

I know that the short-bow out DPS a Longbow one, it’s meant to. Can’t think of why someone would believe otherwise.

What I’m saying is they didn’t put anymore dps on the short-bow because of the bleeding effect, which makes this less viable for glass-cannon. Increasing condition damage/duration actually makes the shortbow deal more overall damage rather than increasing power.

This is why I mentioned later that a condition build is more effective than a glass-cannon build. The only reason you would go a glass-cannon build with shortbow is if you wanted reliable (less) damage against players with heavy condition removal.

The point isn’t that people don’t know how to play this already brain-dead and simplified class. The point is you’re going to be FAR more useful and efficient on any other profession than Ranger. Stop deluding yourself and the rest of the Ranger community

Jay.3284:

The point isn’t that people don’t know how to play this already brain-dead and simplified class. The point is you’re going to be FAR more useful and efficient on any other profession than Ranger. Stop deluding yourself and the rest of the Ranger community

No, you’re flat out wrong because “FAR more useful” is a huge exaggeration and based on your signature, you should know that. The balance between classes isn’t that far off. And for the record, I primarily play dubs, have tested dozens of ranger builds there, and only avoid sPvP because of a lack of gametypes right now.

ANET has done a superb job balancing classes and you know it. Yes, there are problems and tweaks. The point I tried to make (and you probably still don’t agree with because clearly you know everything) was that rangers aren’t nearly as gimped as is commonly perceived.

And, by the way, “brain-dead”? Give me a break. Go say that to the developers that worked long hours making this profession. You don’t have a clue. Here’s some news for you: you simply don’t know it all.

Linguistically Inept.6583:

i love my ranger (and dont think its UP or needs an overhaul)

but i do hate spirits… and do wish theyd add some kind of pet evade (i micromanage alot; but sometimes its impossible to call them back before a heavy hitting attack)

and have had lick wounds fail on slopes even when my pet was still alive (and i believe lick wounds revives your pet anyway)

Everyone wishes the bugs would get fixed.

Silvanus.5821:

stone. Still doesn’t feel like a bunker at all. Pardon? I have to get lightning reflexes, get a shortbow and greatsword and use protect me with a bear pet in order to counter thieves that turn you into stone?

I stopped reading after laughing out loud at that sentence. I don’t think I’ve ever lost to a thief 1v1 on ANY build I’ve used…maybe once or twice to very skilled players. Almost never does that happen and I cannot fathom how you lose to a glass cannon thief.

Chopps.5047:

Jay.3284:

The point isn’t that people don’t know how to play this already brain-dead and simplified class. The point is you’re going to be FAR more useful and efficient on any other profession than Ranger. Stop deluding yourself and the rest of the Ranger community

No, you’re flat out wrong because “FAR more useful” is a huge exaggeration and based on your signature, you should know that. The balance between classes isn’t that far off. And for the record, I primarily play dubs, have tested dozens of ranger builds there, and only avoid sPvP because of a lack of gametypes right now.

ANET has done a superb job balancing classes and you know it. Yes, there are problems and tweaks. The point I tried to make (and you probably still don’t agree with because clearly you know everything) was that rangers aren’t nearly as gimped as is commonly perceived.

And, by the way, “brain-dead”? Give me a break. Go say that to the developers that worked long hours making this profession. You don’t have a clue. Here’s some news for you: you simply don’t know it all.

Since you know it all; let’s play a scenario, I’m doing to do a dungeon, let’s say Arah…

Why would I take a Ranger over any of the other 7 classes? Solid and direct answers please.

Rangers aren’t too bad any more in sPvP but some other classes are far better.

I don’t even need to do anything to get 1st place with a gc warrior most games in 8v8 pvp. Just run in kill 1, run, wait repeat. And warrior isn’t even a good class.

Chopps.5047:

Silvanus.5821:

stone. Still doesn’t feel like a bunker at all. Pardon? I have to get lightning reflexes, get a shortbow and greatsword and use protect me with a bear pet in order to counter thieves that turn you into stone?

I stopped reading after laughing out loud at that sentence. I don’t think I’ve ever lost to a thief 1v1 on ANY build I’ve used…maybe once or twice to very skilled players. Almost never does that happen and I cannot fathom how you lose to a glass cannon thief.

If you are on the same skill as the thief, you are going to lose. Most thieves are not skilled at the moment. I was talking about high-rank players.

Additionally what makes ME laugh is that you mention 1v1 where there is nothing like that in the game. Consider a 3v3 or 5v5 scenario with players on the same skill as yours. A thief comes out of nowhere and stones you. That’s it, you are done. Your team-mates won’t even have the chance to response.

Chopps.5047:

Silvanus.5821:

stone. Still doesn’t feel like a bunker at all. Pardon? I have to get lightning reflexes, get a shortbow and greatsword and use protect me with a bear pet in order to counter thieves that turn you into stone?

I stopped reading after laughing out loud at that sentence. I don’t think I’ve ever lost to a thief 1v1 on ANY build I’ve used…maybe once or twice to very skilled players. Almost never does that happen and I cannot fathom how you lose to a glass cannon thief.

I’ll put up 1 gold per duel, and will duel you until you run out of gold from me killing you on my Thief.

My brother plays the Ranger, I the Thief, and there is no possible way a Ranger could ever beat a Thief of equal skill, or better. Once I get him off the Ranger, and playing another class he’ll realize how much time he has wasted.

The way your initial post reads, you’re not a Ranger, or not one who spends any amount of time in WvW. I havn’t seen a worse class since the EQ2 Conjy in a PvP setting, and they were really bad.

No, my money is on you actually being one of the following; Thief, D/D Elementalist, or maybe a Warrior.

A lot of people have issues with the Ranger and I really don’t see why. Sure the pets die easy, sure the Damage we deal is lower than most. But the reason we deal lower damage is because our pets can deal the same damage of us… So yes a Ranger alone is weak. But a Ranger + Pet attack is a lot more powerful than you’d think.

Personally I think Ranger is extremely powerful, and even if it wasn’t I’d still stick with it cause I enjoy it the most. I also love the Rangers downed ability more than any other professions. And people say we have the worst downed… Having your pet revive you seems pretty kitten useful to me. Thief and teleport a few inches or go invisible… In most instances that’s completely useless cause people and mobs still know exactly where you are.

I really don’t see why so many people complain about it, if the profession is so un blanaced and so broken to you, and you can’t stand it so much, why are you still playing as a Ranger? If you feel it’s broken then play as a thief or a warrior, something that isn’t “broken”. But to me Ranger feels balanced enough, sure it has some issues, I won’t deny that. The pet could be improved survivability, and maybe even allow players to chose their pets traits and attributes to be more related to it. But if Ranger isn’t for you then don’t play it. There are tons of people who love the Ranger despite what issues people say it has…

Chopps.5047:

Silvanus.5821:

stone. Still doesn’t feel like a bunker at all. Pardon? I have to get lightning reflexes, get a shortbow and greatsword and use protect me with a bear pet in order to counter thieves that turn you into stone?

I stopped reading after laughing out loud at that sentence. I don’t think I’ve ever lost to a thief 1v1 on ANY build I’ve used…maybe once or twice to very skilled players. Almost never does that happen and I cannot fathom how you lose to a glass cannon thief.

you and all your arguments dead..sorry after i read this

i played so much pvp/tpvp with my ranger and i get much builds and i can tell you the only way you can stop a thief killing you is play bunker, with offensiv builds you have no big chance and that shows me that you have not much expirence.

yes, you can kill an thief as a ranger thats true, but dont tell its easy like hell and with everybuild

DancinPuppeh.8421:

A lot of people have issues with the Ranger and I really don’t see why. Sure the pets die easy, sure the Damage we deal is lower than most. But the reason we deal lower damage is because our pets can deal the same damage of us… So yes a Ranger alone is weak. But a Ranger + Pet attack is a lot more powerful than you’d think.

Personally I think Ranger is extremely powerful, and even if it wasn’t I’d still stick with it cause I enjoy it the most. I also love the Rangers downed ability more than any other professions. And people say we have the worst downed… Having your pet revive you seems pretty kitten useful to me. Thief and teleport a few inches or go invisible… In most instances that’s completely useless cause people and mobs still know exactly where you are.

I really don’t see why so many people complain about it, if the profession is so un blanaced and so broken to you, and you can’t stand it so much, why are you still playing as a Ranger? If you feel it’s broken then play as a thief or a warrior, something that isn’t “broken”. But to me Ranger feels balanced enough, sure it has some issues, I won’t deny that. The pet could be improved survivability, and maybe even allow players to chose their pets traits and attributes to be more related to it. But if Ranger isn’t for you then don’t play it. There are tons of people who love the Ranger despite what issues people say it has…

cause:
1. in pve/wvw or pet dies far to much even if you get controll about it
2.in pvp everyone kite your pet so easy
3.or downed would be nice, if the 2 would be aoe and pet wont bug 80% of the time

Chopps.5047:

G) has successfully run pure spirits and facerolled level 20 fractals
. Spirits do not suck, you just have to trait for it. Don’t tell me Nature Magic traits suck either because that’s a load of “kitten”. You can’t just trait marksmanship and skirmishing then try to run spirits (probably using them incorrectly) and then wonder why thy die. I have no sympathy for that. I have groups that love it when I bust out spirits because they know they get protection on hit thats on a short cooldown.

Spirits suck no matter how you trait it. You must be in some horrible groups if they believe getting 3 sec of protection at 50% (if traited) every 10 secs for one member of the group randomly is good. There’s no defense you can make for the ranger’s spirits.

Ranger isn’t bad in PVE, could be a bit better to bring them in line with other classes, pet is pretty useless.

PVP, WvW, meh, not very good.

some ppl need to learn pet micro ( pmuch anyone saying pets are useless ).

some species are useless, i will give you that.

atm there are 2 defined & competitive specs ( outside of niche tweaks that some players hold close to the chest ) in tpvp: trap & full bunker. trap is the default because of the existence of home point mesmer. full bunker is a far better straight up point defender than a mesmer, but that won’t matter until portal sees a change.

a viable power build is very difficult to come by for rangers right now, & the primary reason is because we do not have any power-based damage utilities except Quickness. so we must rely on weapon for all power damage, whereas a trap spec can dps with shortbow + 3 utilities on sub-20s cooldowns with decent survivability.

really, we have 8 utilities locked up in our pets, which is too many ( all signets & shouts ). this leaves traps for condi, then survival is split between condi, power & utility.

i would recommend:

Frost Trap becomes a power-based DPS trap in addition to current effects.

Muddy Terrain cast time reduced to instant or 1/4s, immobilize increased to 4s. Remove snare field or shorten duration.

Change Sharpening Stone to add damage to next 5 attacks, scales with Power.

All Signet actives should affect both pet & player by default, then give us a new master trait in the power line. it feels like we are forced 30 deep in power just to have basic functionality of 20% of our utilities.

Spirits feel like signets, they can only be useful in a single trait line, & even then are still underwhelming. I actually like their design, giving an activated ability each in addition to passives, but they just don’t make a big enough impact. In the current state of the game, we need to get DPS out of our utilities. So I would say the best way to improve spirits is to add Damage to their activated / on death abilities.

Chopps.5047:

J) does not use “combat mode” because it actually makes the game more difficult? I run a widow keyboard and corsair m90 mouse and spent about 8 hours tweaking my keybindings. I never have any issues with control, have seen combat mode and understands that it would make me worse, and, by the way, I speed run jumping puzzles, which I define as “holding run 95% of the way through”. I also like the way ground targeting works for a variety of reasons I won’t go into now.

I realize this may be controversial and a lot of beginners might disagree with me. However, I’m an old competitive gamer who’s spent his entire life playing games like this—all the way back to Cosmic Encounter. To give you an idea of how much I like ranger in GW2, I have 1000 hours on my ranger and haven’t even leveled another class passed 60. I am running ~20 fractals and completed my monthly dubs slayings before the first week of the month was up.

Don’t sit here and tell me rangers need this or that. You guys need to quit wasting your time with combat mode and actually get good hardware and set up keybindings. Stop going on here and trying to ruin this class for everyone that likes it. And I don’t want rangers to be able to equip staff.

Grats for being a master ranger im sure there are equivilents of other classes as well who make their class shine despite the flaws.
Just because some people can play Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1 flawlessly doesnt mean there isnt a place for chopstixs

If a class is balanced you shouldnt have to spend 8 hours tweaking controls to be able to do well at it. If it takes god mode to make the ranger shine then yes it is broken.
Ok a lot of people have not tried hard enough before they complain but an average player should be able to play the game on an average rig and obtain a resonable standard of sucess in game.

Saying your the Lim Yo-Hwan of GW2 rangers there fore nothing need changing because you have perfected the class makes your post come across as a well written and polite version of LTP noobs

No you are not the only one.

Yes, there are some bugs with our profession and yes we all know about the bugged AI on our pets.

While we might be missing all the AoE effects that many others have, the overwhelming DPS that some have or the large HP’s other’s have we have:

Pets – they can soak up damage instead of us, distract targets and with swapping – offer a seemingly unlimited HP. (spec for quick pet swapping) PLUS many of them can solo kill many PvE non-boss targets.

Much like all the other classes. the Ranger might not be for everyone. Leveling 0-30 was the most problematic. What saved me playing Ranger early game was equipping the SS/Dagger which gives us a few escape options.

Its fun to take one of my more ‘tanky’ pets and just stand there and watch them kill something. Some are rather ‘squishy’ while others are not so much. Best check the Guildwars2 Wiki and compare specs – its like having my own private tank!

Exarthious.5792:

Chopps.5047:

Silvanus.5821:

stone. Still doesn’t feel like a bunker at all. Pardon? I have to get lightning reflexes, get a shortbow and greatsword and use protect me with a bear pet in order to counter thieves that turn you into stone?

I stopped reading after laughing out loud at that sentence. I don’t think I’ve ever lost to a thief 1v1 on ANY build I’ve used…maybe once or twice to very skilled players. Almost never does that happen and I cannot fathom how you lose to a glass cannon thief.

I’ll put up 1 gold per duel, and will duel you until you run out of gold from me killing you on my Thief.

Hey, I know you were talking to that other Ranger, but I would be willing to duel you for 1g per duel. I am down for tonight? Or any night, really…let me know..don’t leave me hanging. I’m a ranger btw.

CRrabbit.1284:

Ranger is a easy-to-start but hard-to-master class in my opinion. You have to have deep understanding about the class to open the door of glory, and even after you master it, you can be a tough guy but still not the best one coz ranger don’t have the easy GOD mode like some other classes. By spending same efforts on other classes you might get quicker/better result. Investment VS benefit unbalance is the real reason why many ppl complain.

Very nice post. +1 my friend

Being competitive as a Ranger is not simple

DancinPuppeh.8421:

A lot of people have issues with the Ranger and I really don’t see why. Sure the pets die easy, sure the Damage we deal is lower than most. But the reason we deal lower damage is because our pets can deal the same damage of us… So yes a Ranger alone is weak. But a Ranger + Pet attack is a lot more powerful than you’d think.

The problem I have with this reasoning is that if you need the pet damage to make the ranger on par with other class damage, then the ranger should get that pet damage for free.

Unfortunately, to really make the pet effective you need to devote several traits to it. Traits you can’t use for other abilities. Other classes aren’t hindered by this burden. Mind you, there is one combo (cats) which completely blows all the other pets away, so you could argue a few traits make pets balanced while more traits make them more powerful. But if that’s the case I’d like to see it true for all pets, not just cats.

Then there’s the oft-mentioned pet scaling problem. Other classes get to level 80, then upgrade to exotic gear for a ~20% damage boost. If my ranger’s damage is 70% ranger, 30% pet, then upgrading to exotic weapons means I get a (0.7*1.2)+(0.3) = 1.14 or only a 14% damage boost.

Same goes for armor/tanking. Rangers need a way to “upgrade” their pets. Maybe a collar item which boosts pet stats. Or if they want to be lazy about it, just have ranger stats partly affect pet stats.

Silvanus.5821:

I tried going beastmaster, even though this was one of the most successful builds I’ve seen so far in sPvP as a ranger, it just doesn’t cut it because pet rarely hits a fly AND if you use one of the powerful ones (feline or bird) it’s too squishy. One way to get around this is to keep snaring your opponent (Sigil of superior ice is a good choice)

The sigil of superior ice would seem to be a terrible choice. It’s 2 sec of slow with a 10 sec cooldown. Factor in chance to proc and you’re looking at about 2 sec of slow per 12-15 sec. Muddy terrain is probably a better choice. Cripples every 2 sec, sticks around for 20 sec, 30 sec cooldown.

That said, based on past games I’ve played I’m pretty sure the bug with pets being unable to attack moving targets is that they’ve set the pet attack range = skill range. So the pet runs within range of a fleeing target, starts its attack, and by the time the skill fires the target is out of range. The fix is to either make the attack range shorter than the skill range so there’s a good chance the target will still be in range when the skill fires.

Another problem is the chase algorithm they’re using. It heads for your current position. They need to make it lead slightly – predict where you’re going and have the pet move to that point instead. That’ll make it cut more corners if a target tries to zig-zag, making the pet catch up more quickly. They’re doing this for ranged projectiles, so it should be easy to adopt and transfer over to pets.

Both problems affect mobs too (circle strafing is ridiculously effective at avoiding nearly all mob melee damage). So a fix for the pets will also make PvE harder.