I noticed that if u search “ranger” on guildhead or wikipedia or even the community site itself, it gives u the 3 special things for rangers :
-Pets
-Traps
-Spirits
…
Ok, first of all 2 of those 3, I never use in PvP. Except if I’m rolling some sort of support build with Spirits (which is rare, whats the point, they die so easily), which means that a bunch of your general utility is just for support for your teammates (meaning u lose dmg overall, u have to go 30p into the nature magic tree to get the most out of it).
Next are traps, I NEVER use traps. Never.
They just aren’t interesting compared to other utility u can get. Between spike trap and lightning reflexes, the choice is pretty darn obvious, even though lightning reflexes is just a simple skill that evades backward doing dmg and granting vigor. yet this simple skill surpasses ALL of the “ranger unique trap” skills.
I know, I have seen rangers use traps, but I never have seen one that was actually good with them (doesn’t mean he is bad, just means the traps are bad overall), correct me if I’m wrong, but the ranger using traps would be better off using other utility, even shouts.
So what does this mean for players that DON’T want to play a support build? The ones that like doing dmg but also would like to be tough to kill. Well we have 2 other types of utility (signets are out of the picture here) : Shouts and Survival.
As a ranger, I count only on these 2, if not only 1. Survival utility is the best utility because it gives us the best dmg (quickening zephyr vs. sick ‘em), aswell as some good survivability (muddy terrain, lightning reflexes). So I count mostly on survival.
Now to shouts.
Guys, we all know that our pets can be our greatest weapon, but also our downfall, they can be epic, but they can also suck sadly :/ We cannot count on our pets with this type of utility due to the fact they :
- die easily
- can’t jump 1 metre and must run 500 metres to get to the target
- laggy response when given demands, such as the F2 ability.
These happen to everyone, the third one depends more or less on the person.
The only shout utility that I use and actually like is “Protect Me”. Why? Because if u get a bear, u get a 6s of invulnerability. On a 60s CD I think. Thats better then some elite skills, even if it isn’t as reliable.
So basically, what this all means, is that I see a lot of rangers only use 1 type of utility, most likely survival. There is a lack of interest in, atleast, 65% of the ranger utility skills, not including signets. I tried builds mixing up different types of utility and it doesn’t work for rangers as it does for other classes. Its kinda sad seeing that some utility just “glow” more then others, and that all the devs did to come up with traps goes to waste. It makes me think some times if ranger was really a finished class or not, like engineers (rangers are in a way better position then engineers though xD). hope I wasn’t the only one that noticed this :P
