First off: this will probably be a long post and I am strictly talking PvE. I started ranger on day one of head start access. It was my only character for a very long time. I did all dungeons (minus Arah), personal story, and 100% map completion before I ever made another character. I check the forums daily and always thought it was so cute to watch the complainers whine about how broken the ranger class is. “They just don’t know what they are doing and want a free ride”, I would think to myself. I acknowledged that there are problems, pets being the majority of them (aggro issues, Sic’ Em bug, Lick Wounds bug, insta-death in AoE). I truly thought these complainers needed to learn to play. After all, I got through everything the PvE world had to offer in just under 400 hours of game play in about 5 months. I had been kicked from dungeon groups for being a ranger. Same with fractals. But I held to my thought that it was all because they didn’t know what they were doing. I ran a full Condition Damage trapper at first, but got bored and switched to full glass cannon. Since I knew the dungeons very well, I rarely died and so thought that I was doing great. Then I made a guardian, and power leveled it up to 80 quickly with crafting. Did the same with a Mesmer. I started to do my typical dungeons with them:
WHAT THE HECK ANET?!?!?!?!
Seriously. It took me switching (albeit to the classes some claim are super powered) to realize rangers are truly borked right now. I can bring so much more to ANY party makeup using other classes (engineer is still a bit lackluster and necros are kinda stuck with a condition build I know). It is not even a comparison. It was amazing to find out other classes had a core class mechanic that DID NOT GIMP THEM. I had just accepted my pet would fall to Subject Alpha in 3 micro-seconds, taking a lot of my damage with it. Now I realize other classes have amazing mechanics that actually help either themselves or the party or both. There is absolutely NOTHING a ranger can bring to a party that is not stomped into the dirt by multiple other classes. Healing Spring is about the only truly exceptional skill that parties love, but it is by no means on the same level as others. Why take a huge water field when your guardian or elementalist can protect you from the damage that the spring would heal anyway? So after this revelation I began to actually read other professions skills and traits. WOW, what is going on? Traps in Precision and Crit. Damage tree? And also full of traits that buff your pet (who is most likely dead). 30 in Marksmanship so our signets affect us as well as your pet (who is most likely dead)? It was like a had the air knocked out of me.
Like I stated before, this is all about PvE. Dungeons are what I do 95% of the time. PvP or WvW are completely separate animals and I am not discussing that. So I apologize to any rangers whom I had condescending thoughts about while reading these forums. This class needs to be buffed drastically IMMEDIATELY. There are many who will tell me to learn to play. I tell you to try out another class, because you obviously have not. Nobody who has played other classes will be able to say rangers are not borked without lying through their teeth. The abundance of GW2LFG groups with “no rangers” in the title is a very good indicator of things. So as of now, my entire account has 520 hours played. 480 is on my ranger. And I have been able to accomplish more on my 2 other characters in the 40 hours split between them than the 480 on my ranger (except world exploration, that is nothing but a huge time sink). And so my first character that I have spent a lot of gold on to get fully geared with several armor sets and exotics of every weapon will be shelved until they fix this abomination of a class. I have never posted on a forum for any game I have played, but this is absolutely unacceptable. I apologize for the length of my post, thank you for reading and I will see you in game (but not on my ranger).
TL;DR: Ranger is thoroughly broken, I realized this after playing other classes. I urge you to do the same.