Guild Wars 2

For the most part I have fun on my ranger, but we really are lacking compared to other classes when it comes to having some interesting weapon and skill interactions.

For example..long bow 3 gives us a short stealth, and beyond that we have abilities that make us jump forwards and backwards..but nothing as fun as what other classes can do.

Engineers and Mesmers can pull targets off walls, mesmers can mass stealth and portal. Warriors can plant banners, use their hammer jumps for interesting maneuvers. Guardians can make barriers, knockbacks, and drop ground spells to speed up allies. Necromancers can self portal, etc etc.

All of these abilities add a touch of variety and allow players to engage the world and its combat system with creativity.

Rangers need a bit of support capability, but they also need some FUN FACTOR, we are so very bland in this area and I personally believe this is the area we are so overlooked.
Perhaps initially the pet was supposed to offer us more in this department, however this isn’t enjoyable for the player, actions that can cause unique and dynamic outcomes need the control and responsiveness only a human can provide.

I think others would describe the as utility, and there is in aspect of that..but for me it’s more about plain old fun.

Well we have spirits/traps and lots of soft/hard CC trough weapon/utility skills and pets. Even though pets can be pretty gimmicky at times they still provide the a very wide range of utility/support.

No not really. We get maybe 2 pets other players could even care about in groups … 3 if you count AoE fear being useful. (the other 2 give a very short duration 5-stack of might, or fury that isn’t even unique TBH.)

There’s Combos/Initiators but those are really only accessible on like 1/3 of the weapons and skills and barely even last 3-5 seconds. And spirits… they pretty much got nerfed and have very limited situations where they’re better than just plain old self-sustain through the incredibly boring Signets. …..Suffice it to say there’s a long ways to go here and Anet will probably get bored and give up long before really cool stuff ever happens to this class. You’ll notice they’ll put content out at a feverish pitch when it actually excites them, but there’s nothing about Ranger that’s excited them since Splinter Barrage…

The Rangers utility comes from the pet. Regardless of whether or not you think its good, that’s what it was designed for.

The Mesmer and Engineer are the best “utility professions”, so of curse they are going to have more utility. Warriors doesn’t have more interesting skills then we do, I’m not sure what you see there? The Guardian is build to be the best support professions, so the fact that it has better support is not a big surprise. Necromancers can do some fun things yes, but when you have a profession that is centred around death, you are bound to get something creative and interesting out of it. It’s much more difficult to be creative with the Ranger, as it’s such an established class, and have an extremely fanatic player base. If you don’t believe me, try making a new topic suggesting a rifle for the Ranger, and then watch the negative posts rain down over it.

It’s not that Ranger doesn’t have any interesting skills, it’s just that the interesting skills we have, like pet skills, spirits, or shouts, doesn’t really work that well.

Spirits bring huge support capability. Offhand axes pulls. Spotter gives nearby allies an impressive +150 precision passively, Traps can immobilize or damage. We can trait for some of the longest range in the game.

Necros have nothing like our ability to jump around. Engineers are similiar but it seemed to me a lot more clunky. Warriors are too boring to contemplate. Might be a case of the “grass is greener”.

Although I admit I’d like to be more useful during sieges.

I agree with you that Rangers are lackluster. Pets are meant to be the fun mechanic but in big fights the pet is as much a hindrance as a help. I really like playing my Ranger in PvE but park the class for dungeons and WvW.

Compared to the other classes mentioned:

Warriors: High in combat speed, tons of control and banners rock. Probably my most fun class at the moment

Guardians: Alt Healing is ridiculously good making shouts phenomenal. Standing in the middle of a massive group of enemies and not dying is tremendously satisfying. Even retaliation has its funny moments.

Mesmers: Heavy group utility (portals, veil, null field) as well as the entire clone system

Engineer: Bomb and grenade kits along with recent rune changes have made them awesome… 1900 range on spammable AoE grenades is wicked fun.

Necros/Eles: Both fall into a similar category… nothing sexy put really effective when played well

Thieves: Stealth… this is my go to class for roaming.

Kilger.5490:

Spirits bring huge support capability. Offhand axes pulls. Spotter gives nearby allies an impressive +150 precision passively, Traps can immobilize or damage. We can trait for some of the longest range in the game.

Necros have nothing like our ability to jump around. Engineers are similiar but it seemed to me a lot more clunky. Warriors are too boring to contemplate. Might be a case of the “grass is greener”.

Although I admit I’d like to be more useful during sieges.

Playing a condition/crit damage hybrid warrior with 3 physical utilities and the trait for those utilities is very fun and interesting. If warriors are too boring to contemplate, please stop using stability/zerker stance/endure pain and a stun build.

The most interesting utility Rangers have, from my perspective, is muddy terrain. It can be used just as a drake charges up a fiery breath, or using frost trap, muddy terrain and whirling axe for some good damage and a huge chill time (immediately cleansed ofc), but even if the stars align and those crazy combos work, it’s never anywhere near as effective as swapping to shortbow and autoattacking all day long.

If those kinds of strange combos actually had a good reward for the risk and skill needed to execute, then adding more tricks up the sleeve wouldn’t be as needed as it is now.

Straegen.2938:

I agree with you that Rangers are lackluster. Pets are meant to be the fun mechanic but in big fights the pet is as much a hindrance as a help. I really like playing my Ranger in PvE but park the class for dungeons and WvW.

Compared to the other classes mentioned:

Warriors: High in combat speed, tons of control and banners rock. Probably my most fun class at the moment

Guardians: Alt Healing is ridiculously good making shouts phenomenal. Standing in the middle of a massive group of enemies and not dying is tremendously satisfying. Even retaliation has its funny moments.

Mesmers: Heavy group utility (portals, veil, null field) as well as the entire clone system

Engineer: Bomb and grenade kits along with recent rune changes have made them awesome… 1900 range on spammable AoE grenades is wicked fun.

Necros/Eles: Both fall into a similar category… nothing sexy put really effective when played well

Thieves: Stealth… this is my go to class for roaming.

Even though I don’t play ranger, I agree that they are kind of lackluster. In WvW they are the easiest target. The pet is supposed to be a useful part of the rangers kit, but really, we can just ignore the pet and go straight for the ranger.

As for the mesmer part you said, I don’t fully agree. Mesmers can be really fun, they have cool and interesting skills like decoy, blur and illusionary leap. But the glamour build mesmer(veil, feedback, null field and/or portal) is the most boring one. In my WvW guild we have too few mesmers. The group support you get from glamour build is really great(also mandatory in organized wvw), but also REALLY boring. Sometimes you will be lucky and have the privilege of portaling a golem somewhere.

And for the ele/necro part, as it is now eles are the weakest profession alongside the ranger. The ele used to be OP, then was nerfed into oblivion. Yes, they can pull off some cool things, but with all the work you put into your combos, rotations, managing cooldowns without seeing them and so on, you will only be on par with a warrior. And the warrior needs to do alot less. I could rant for a long time about the state of elementalists, but there is no need for that here.

Back to the topic, it’s time we eles and you rangers get some love from the devs. I must admit rangers need the most attention now, I cannot fathom why Anet prefers to continue buffing the warriors, who are fine now.

Kasama.8941:

It’s much more difficult to be creative with the Ranger, as it’s such an established class, and have an extremely fanatic player base. If you don’t believe me, try making a new topic suggesting a rifle for the Ranger, and then watch the negative posts rain down over it.

Rifle isn’t a creative mechanic though, it’s just an Aesthetic for a projectile launcher.
It’s redundant.

Here’s some mechanics that would be creative and useful:

• Search and Rescue has the Pet actively DRAG the downed target out of an AOE/patch and back to safety where the ranger initiated S&R (just like path of scars)
• If ALL ranger shouts acted like CotW, I:E Blast finisher that also grants allies Elemental Shields (could be a BM trait if having it as default was too OP)
• If EVERY Pet could lay down an Initiator field or finisher. ..esp the underused ones.
• If spirit’s skills also counted as Combo Fields (and lasted more than 1 second)
• If Condition and Healing stats REALLY modified the values of these mechanics
• If Regen boon itself Stacked or increased in “pips” like it did in GW1.
• If mobs actually popped Heals so that our arsonal of interrupts & Poison options weren’t almost completely “just for Roleplaying & low-lel sPvP”
• Torch as a Mainhand weapon that lays down small but HIGH DPS AoEs
• If PoleArms finally became a weapon, and ours summoned more Nature stuff/physics
• If stacking Might wasn’t the ONLY thing that mattered in End-game content….