I started with a Ranger as my first GW2 toon and now can’t stand to play them. It all has to do with what HOT really did to the game overall. Rangers used to have several options for play that were fun, now it’s all one cookie cutter or done. In an expansion where elite skills are necessary for end game we get a healer and a staff? Who thought a healer that’s what Ranger’s were missing? Look the ranger was fun, but Lake Doric pretty much was the straw that broke camel’s back. Because Clerics pretty much rule out all the ranged capabilities of the class, a generic mob rules out what a Ranger should be good at, being a ranged fighter. And practically every fight in Doric is going to have Clerics the only mob that has an 80 – 90% reflective block uptime, not to mention with soo little opportunity to actually damage them they will be there for the full fight. Sure traps and close combat usually get the job done, but the ugliness of the fights and the poor performance of pets is utterly infuriating.
Wyverns look cool and their knockdown is pretty awesome, but since we don’t get to control their best cc, it’s at the mercy of a random attack generator that misses more than it hits since it opens with the attack. Smokescale’s smoke field doesn’t blind unless the pet is attacked directly while in the field, yet all the NPC smokescale in the game have a field that auto blinds without requiring you to attack the smokescale. Bristleback would have been an amazing long range pet but the AOE shot ensures you can’t single target enemies as they will make sure you’re fighting many mobs including passive ones we don’t need to fight. Does anyone actually use the Reef Drake? No seriously I haven’t seen one in use since the Southshore release… And the Tiger it’s a good pet no complaints here, but that’s one out of the new pets that actually is useful. The old pets well they are completely outclassed by the new material, bears used to be great tanks that could soak up the damage with their natural heal, now they get burned by constant barrages of condition stacking from practically the most basic HOT mob.
Add to this a lot of veteran mobs with massive health pools, doing significant damage, and requiring more cc. Then the elites come into play, worse than champions with their devastating damage and insane health pools. Elite Crazed Veteran Sharpshooter, lancer, Cleric, Smokescale, Wind Rider, that can make short work of pet leaving the Ranger outgunned and out of cc.
So is this the future of the game? Where a class just gets unlucky with an underperforming elite spec for current content. Short of the Revenant which I just hate the restrictive noncustomizable build and play style, Rangers are more and more feeling neglected. Solo play is going to only increase with newer zones and more expansions meaning solo play is going to be essential to playing the game at all. One would hope that the next class you throw the you’re a non self sufficient PVE elite spec monkey wrench into can still be fun. But then again it probably won’t happen since you’re not going to make the Engineer suffer another elite setback by making their next spec a healing one. As for the future of the Ranger one would hope you’d actually work to fix their shortcomings in ranged and pet utility, but at this point I don’t expect it to change given how little quality of life changes really fell to the ranger’s favor so far.