Guild Wars 2

Name a Game where Rangers have been implemented in 1 better and 1 worse manner than they have been in GW2 and why:

Common complaints in GW2 from Rangers:
Pets are near useless in 5 mans because of aoe and insta-jib mechanics
Pets/spirits are near useless in wvw because of aoe
Pets are frustrating in 1v1 because they have bad f2 response time and cant even hit a moving target
Bows are the iconic class weapon, but are inferior to all other weapons in both pve and pvp (with tower-hugging as an exception).
Traps are bad
Shouts are bad (guard is only good because of cooldown+NV)
Signets actives are active on the pet
Sword causes you to lose control of your character for 2/3 of the rotation
Not any better at bows than warriors or rogues
No nature/magic related bow weapon skills (possible exception for new stealth shot)
No preparations
__________________________

Better: Rangers(scouts) have been implemented better in DAoC, largely do to the way bow mechanics worked and access to stealth. Was given very important role in game through True Sight.

Worse: NWN. Rangers in NWN were worse than rangers in GW2 because they had poor access to pet choices (obsoletion), the pets were just as bad at hitting moving targets, and there was no real concept of mobility.

Looks like fun:

Better: WoW (Hunters) 95% ranged combat until MoP, from there on 100% ranged combat, working and useful pets and the feeling of your pet being individual because of traits not only for pets, but also pets having their own traits. And nice dps…

Worse: 4Story (Archers) Can be played ranged and melee as far as I know, but because of the crappy graphis and pets being only available to this weird necro-like summoner class I stopped playing at lvl 10.

I’d like to expand here
Better:
WoW-
Pet variety. Rare pets, colour options, much less goofy looking than gw2 pets lol… Oh dear.
Pet survivability. Due to decrease in AoE damage pets take. Due to traits, pet levels.
Working pet stow.
More control over pet abilities. You could choose which skills your pets used or which they would skip in their rotation. I’d love a skip on bird swiftness buffing but I can’t see the pets ability bar in this game.

Skyrim-
Can play medium armoured archer and not forced to have a dumb animal. GG

Worse than gw2 ranger: Nothing I’ve experienced is worse than the issues ranger has. Still love the class because of the melee! Wish I could sacrifice my pets to be stronger. Literally.

The old Everquest I pets were quite funny because the pathing was bad and they wandered all over the place. They also picked up aggro on every monster that saw them, and I seem to remember the master inheriting the aggro once the pet died. Quite literally 40 monsters including named bosses could turn up at once and murder everything.

Stooperdale.3560:

The old Everquest I pets were quite funny because the pathing was bad and they wandered all over the place. They also picked up aggro on every monster that saw them, and I seem to remember the master inheriting the aggro once the pet died. Quite literally 40 monsters including named bosses could turn up at once and murder everything.

And yet, Magicians were incredibly powerful if you learned the idiosyncrasies of the pet AI and how to get it to do what you wanted it to do. Dem water pets with backstab…

Rangers, on the other hand, were incredibly more melee-oriented until you could Alt-Advance some bow bonuses and Endless Quiver. Imagine if you will, fellow rangers, having to keep one arrow for each shot you make. That means each shot of Rapid Shot, too. Each Barrage. That was the EverQuest ranger.

On the other hand, they were incredibly broken for a short time in melee with a 3 dmg / 13 delay blunt weapon in both hands. “Moss Covered Twig”, dual wielded, and you could spam attacks faster than anything else AND outagro the healer keeping you standing up. Aside from that there was some actual use to them as off-tanks and for a long length of the game they were real good at solo play.

So, mixed bag there.

As for a game in which they were unequivocally bad? The old SSI AD&D games. Gold Box and otherwise. There just wasn’t much point to the class.

Better -

Warhammer (Squig Herders). Could use a pet for dps and utility, or not use one and get a boost to dps. Also, bows actually did good damage.

DAOC (Hunters). Again pets were an option to charm, yet the class did good dps with or w/o.

WoW. Pretty obvious. Pets were useful, as well as grew larger with levels, has some great skills, could hit moving targets, and were not a liability.

Sadly, I could go on just in the MMO genre, but Ill leave it at that. Sad fact is just about every single game out there have done “Rangers” much better. When a Warrior can hit harder with a range weapon than a “Ranger” you know something is wrong.

Worse -

EQ1 orginal, no expansion. Rangers were kitten to hell. Bows did horrible damage, their heals were pitiful, there dps was subpar, they fit nowhere in the group. From what I heard this changed after some time, but it reminds of the Rangers in GW2.

It all depends on the game lore and where they see rangers..

DnD says that a ranger is a heavy armor wearing class with nature abilities (animal empathy, …). And that is indeed nicely implemented in all the DnD based games (Baldur’s Gate I & II, Neverwinter Nights, …).

In Guild Wars a ranger is a medium armor wearing class with a natural bond to its animal companion. And that is indeed also nicely implemented (lorewise): Our pet is always with us..

So not sure here on how to name one with a worse implementation, since I’m quite sure the developers of that game have implemented the ranger class as they saw fit..

/weird_thread

Vaxx.3178:

Worse -

EQ1 orginal, no expansion. Rangers were kitten to hell. Bows did horrible damage, their heals were pitiful, there dps was subpar, they fit nowhere in the group. From what I heard this changed after some time, but it reminds of the Rangers in GW2.

I played a ranger with first release of EQ1. It was . . . underwhelming. So was the magician, my second class. (I really pick the bad classes, don’t I?) Both were good for solo play but until much later nobody wanted rangers due to every other class doing things better than them . . . and nobody wanted mages because the pathing in a couple places could make the pet act up and thus they became loathed for “causing trouble”.

It got a little better mechanically but mostly as a ranger I was just called to off tank until Planes of Power when rangers became much more powerful. A server I was on had a team of six rangers which was “Team Killsteal” on raids – they’d ranged DPS bosses until 11% or so then burn all their disciplines and outdamage even the heavy hitters unless they went for it too.

Better: WoW, for the reasons listed above…except how horrible their melee options were and the dead zone that existed in the early expansions.

Worse: Shadowbane. The ranger was by far the worst class in SB. Didn’t use pets but relied on one damage buff skill to make up for their horrible weapon skills. Very fragile and poor build diversity. Scouts and warriors were better ranged debuffers with bows, they couldn’t melee down a barbarian or warrior, casters would smoke them from far away, and Templars would stam drain them into irrelevancy.

Only two effective builds were ever made. Human dodge/damage resist wererat bow rangers and the ultra gimmicky half-giant melee health regen ranger.

The former got access to some incredible self buffs and a massive piercing damage buff making it a stud burst damage build but also incredibly bunkery due to massive dodge and damage resist.

The latter build made the RRR ranger look glassy. It did very little damage but would regen all damage done to full in under 2 seconds because of 3 stacking regen skills and all regen jewels. And with a massive hp pool it would usually take a full group focus firing on it to bring it down.

The other builds were a choice between bad and terribad. Not enough stamina to sustain its attack long enough to drop a target. Low hp pool made them crumble in any 1v1. Low weapon skills meant it couldn’t deal with high def builds. Couldn’t handle the spotting duty of scouts. Couldn’t keep up in stealth groups. Wasn’t a good meat shield option (except regen ranger), poor ranged attack, bad stances.

Better: Guild Wars 1 – Based on the fact that they were once built on there ability to interrupt targets and high skill play.

Worse: WoW – Kitten Game

aussieheals.6843:

Better: Guild Wars 1 – Based on the fact that they were once built on there ability to interrupt targets and high skill play.

Worse: WoW – Kitten Game

I’m surprised no one mentioned the original GW in an earlier post; I had a blast on my Ranger in that game. So much fun, in fact, that I had 4 of them.

Better:
Perfect world internationnal archer: so kitten broken it kills all the other class in pvp and manage to outank anyone even at the shortest range
Worse: Everquest 1

Imagi.4561:

aussieheals.6843:

Better: Guild Wars 1 – Based on the fact that they were once built on there ability to interrupt targets and high skill play.

Worse: WoW – Kitten Game

I’m surprised no one mentioned the original GW in an earlier post; I had a blast on my Ranger in that game. So much fun, in fact, that I had 4 of them.

Yeah the GW1 Ranger I loved, only had the one Ranger for all the time I played GW1 (6 years was it ?).

The GW2 Ranger just looks like it’s never going to be any good, and I don’t play anything else, my fault I know, but that’s just me !

Solid Gold.9310:

Imagi.4561:

aussieheals.6843:

Better: Guild Wars 1 – Based on the fact that they were once built on there ability to interrupt targets and high skill play.

Worse: WoW – Kitten Game

I’m surprised no one mentioned the original GW in an earlier post; I had a blast on my Ranger in that game. So much fun, in fact, that I had 4 of them.

Yeah the GW1 Ranger I loved, only had the one Range for all the time I played GW1 (6 years was it ?).

The GW2 Ranger just looks like it’s never going to be any good, and I don’t play anything else, my fault I know, but that’s just me !

I never played guild wars 1 but ranger vids look so much more fun

nica.5829:

Solid Gold.9310:

Imagi.4561:

aussieheals.6843:

Better: Guild Wars 1 – Based on the fact that they were once built on there ability to interrupt targets and high skill play.

Worse: WoW – Kitten Game

I’m surprised no one mentioned the original GW in an earlier post; I had a blast on my Ranger in that game. So much fun, in fact, that I had 4 of them.

Yeah the GW1 Ranger I loved, only had the one Range for all the time I played GW1 (6 years was it ?).

The GW2 Ranger just looks like it’s never going to be any good, and I don’t play anything else, my fault I know, but that’s just me !

I never played guild wars 1 but ranger vids look so much more fun

That’s because the ranger (believe it or not) used to actually be a ranger!

/spoiler

Again with the silly idea that “ranger” comes from “to use ranged weapons”. rolly eyes

On topic, I always loved playing a beastmaster in Diablo II. It could never work in GW2, other than as a necro. But it fixed basically all AI problems by you just on-demand summoning whatever you wanted wherever you wanted.

Worse than, definitely Diablo I. That ranger was awful haha.

Better : GW1 = multiple builds (interrupt, evade, runner, traper, beastmaster, condi…)

Worse : GW2 = nothing except stupid IA spirits/pets

Fluffball.8307:

Again with the silly idea that “ranger” comes from “to use ranged weapons”. rolly eyes

On topic, I always loved playing a beastmaster in Diablo II. It could never work in GW2, other than as a necro. But it fixed basically all AI problems by you just on-demand summoning whatever you wanted wherever you wanted.

Worse than, definitely Diablo I. That ranger was awful haha.

From GW2 official website :

“Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows. With traps, nature spirits, and a stable of loyal pets at their command, rangers can adapt to any situation.”

Even a warrior is better ith a longbow than rangers….

My WvW ranger has never been taken down by a longbow warrior, and killed literally thousands of warriors. But that is totally off topic. Ranger = “a person who wanders about large areas of country; a rover”.

Edit: I want to see a video of a longbow warrior beating any type of ranger. Pure bow warrior, not just a warrior using it for a 1 skill DoT and then winning with a melee weapon. I don’t believe even the worst of rangers will fall to that.

Best: Guild Wars 1: The literal definition of versatility. You could play turret style, or interrupts, or use a plethora of non-bow centric builds like stance heavy dagger evasion builds or touch rangers, or trappers, or spirits, or scythes, or bunny thumpers. You could even run support skills for allies and run heal/interrupt support.

Worst: Guild Wars 2: Never have I ever experienced such a horrible implementation of either an archer or a pet class. The pets are terrible at what they do programming wise, and game play wise, they are bland, boring, frustrating, and above all, more limiting to builds than expansive. As far as the archer portion, bows have never been more plain, boring, and lacking of any variety of function. They are either too slow and clunky or completely mindless to the point where you could literally play the game one handed. The utilities are simple and bland and lack defining characteristics that would otherwise make the class feel unique. The most unique utility is spirits, and lets be realistic; they are just warrior banners that can be killed, and can be traited to move. The traits are 50% useless, and the rest are so concentrated in 2 of the 5 traitlines that it’s literally impossible to make the build you would truly want to make.

The one thing Guild Wars 2 got right with rangers is the melee, and even then, the balance is arguably off due to power creep.

Remember that “raising the bar” commercial? Well, ANet, lowering the bar.

Seriously, back in Guild Wars 1 I could come up with great ways to change and balance skills, with high expectations and exact numbers to give for what would be balanced.

Now, my expectations are: “I just want something that works. Yeah, just works. Oh, and not more of the same. Maybe something a little different, the class really hasn’t changed since launch which is bad because every other class has received beneficial patches and rangers were left in the same spot but made gradually worse at it over time. So yeah, something that works, and maybe something a little different. That’s all.”

There are some things I like about GW2’s ranger but I’ll stick to the OP’s request.

GW1’s ranger was a fantastic PvP class because the bow was adept at spreading and maintaining the poison and bleeding conditions across several targets. It could achieve this while also disrupting enemy skills and providing snares via the crippled condition. In addition, it was second only to the warrior class in terms of net armor. It doesn’t really translate to GW2 unfortunately since the game mechanics are much simpler. The bow was slow and thus was not a great PvE weapon but the ranger could make use of every martial weapon in the game via GW1’s dual class system and of course could SoS due to expertise reducing the cost of spirit skills.

If I had to name a poor implementation I’d go with LotRO’s hunter class. It has medium armor, range and exceedingly high damage. It’s actually a good class but clearly Turbine does not understand that giving a ranged class ultra high damage makes one wonder how the class is “balanced” in the larger scheme of things. Luckily LotRO’s PvP is garbage and this design flaw doesn’t rear it’s ugly head often.

mooty.4560:

GW1’s ranger was a fantastic PvP class because the bow was adept at spreading and maintaining the poison and bleeding conditions across several targets. It could achieve this while also disrupting enemy skills and providing snares via the crippled condition.

That’s EXACTLY what the GW2 shortbow does, actually. Not commentating, just pointing that out.

Fluffball.8307:

That’s EXACTLY what the GW2 shortbow does, actually. Not commentating, just pointing that out.

There is a slight similarity but trust me when I say it’s not at all the same.

The bleeding and poison conditions behaved very differently in GW1, providing a fixed, steady damage over time effect. There was no stacks and no additive duration, you just had to re-apply it.. and the duration was such that you could ignore the target for a time before worrying about re-applying it again.

Since GW1 relied on more of a team approach, most builds didn’t include condition removal and instead players would await a monk to remove them. You could then turn to the monk and await for the player to use a condition removal skill, fire off a distracting shot and disable the skill for an additional 20 seconds. That’s like tacking a minute onto a skill’s recharge in GW2, it opened a window for all sorts of mayhem.

GW1 PvP had a lot more depth and the ranger class played a big part.

I know, I’m a GWAM. I just found it amusing that shortbows provide literally EVERYthing GW1 rangers brought to the table.

It just goes to show how much build diversity they added with weapon sets and traits.

Better: GW1 (Ranger). Versatility and adaptability were the defining factors of this implementation. You were not forced into pets, bows were able to pump a reasonable amount of damage and even the support was nice. The interrupt mechanic was fun to use and forced you to always stay on your toes even in pve to interrupt key skills while bringing a mindgame in pvp. The profession primary attribute “expertise” allowed the ranger to explore new playstyles by making more use of the secondary profession running: sword, axe, daggers, scythe, hammer, basically whatever you want. The class had the best bar compression in the game: just by changing the elite skill you change your role and how you play.

Worst: Aion (Ranger). Not much to say. You are not forced into pets and that’s the only good thing. The class is just a raw dps machine: a ranged assassin without stealth. Boring.

I honestly don’t believe that any game I have played has truly been able to capture the essence of the ranger. For me, EQ1 came close, but it lacked the ranged damage. Ranger’s there did better damage dual wielding 1 handed swords. Even the ranger epic was two 1 handed swords. Later, through AA points, you could increase your bow damage and even get headshot, which was great for farming AA’s on light blue’s and farming in general for crafting, but it lacked in the core game. I still play EQ1, and ranger’s now are in a much better place, but I still believe it doesn’t capture what a ranger should be.

The worse game I have played a ranger on is this one, GW2. I honestly don’t care what anyone says, this is not a ranger class, this is a beastmaster class. Anet should change the name of the class. At least in EQ1 I had things of nature that I could use, from camouflage to damage shields, armor buffs, speed buffs, snare’s, ect. With GW2 it’s either one or the other, and most of the time it’s either resisted, cleansed before it hits, obstructed or disappears after 2 seconds which is nothing.

I logged into the game last night to see if things had changed. Go into WvW, hop on the wall of a keep and see a warrior running by. Hit rapid fire, I see damage points over his head instead of the usual out of range message, but when I look at his health, he’s still at full health. I jump off of the wall, he turns towards me, I use skill 4 to knock him down, and it’s resisted, after dodging him twice and unloading another skill 2 on him and he’s still full health, he roots me, starts his little twirling dance and I couldn’t dodge, so he knocked me out and killed me. No DPS on the beastmaster side but godly dps and armor on his side. At least in EQ1 I would be able to snare him for a good 20 seconds, dot him, root him and fill him up with arrows. In EQ1 I only had to worry about other rangers and casters like wizards. There at least a ranger is survivable! Here, we’re just a redheaded stepchild, the punchline of a bad joke!

Better:

UO – The first online game I ever played I picked “Ranger” as the preset skills because of the archery and attunement to Nature through taming. I remember being crushed when a pk killed my dog. I eventually dropped taming to focus on a mix of ranged and sword combat which used all of my skills. After becoming a Glorious Lord through slaying Daemons and Lich Lords with silver/vanq weapons I realized the real efficient skill set was tamer and mage. Wow, what a difference a few dragons make. Imagine riding around on a nightmare that can kill gazers on its own and have a frost wyrm and red dragon running around with you. Thank you poor cows for the precious meat you provided my bodyguards.

DAOC – It was fun having stealth and a bow. The arrow upkeep was a chore though and I wish I would not have picked Hibernia when the game first came out. I blame it on my attraction to playing elves.

WoW – Hunters have better options on every kind of pet upgrade/type/pathing and even though they started in a bad spot a lot of their issues were addressed.

Warhammer – I found the White Lion class majestic and liked the option between bonus damage and utility of the pet.

LoTRO – The Hunter class was wonderfully created to fit as a ranged nuker along with the Runemaster class. It was fun and worked well because of how they were set up as a trinity game. Even though the pvp was different it was fun, but not really what made their game great. Actually I would say the in-game music ability made the game great and made them stand out as unique in all the games I have played. I tried going back to play LoTRO after playing GW2 and the movement and combat seem so lackluster now.

Guild Wars 1 – I could play as I wanted. Sometimes it was nice bringing a pet and being a Beastmaster. Most of the time I preferred interrupting and laying waste with my bow.

Better and Worse:

Shadowbane – Sadly I would say Amazon Huntress was better. Only downfall was you had to play a woman character. Somehow, even though I loved the option between a Rogue and Fighter the Ranger was never really balanced. Rest in peace grumpy-looking Elven Bladeweaver Ranger.

Worse:

… Ever feel like your skill is restricted because of class mechanics? Like Paladins in WoW had a definite ceiling. I feel that way because of the drag of the pet in GW2. It is okay, but honestly how many hate doing the dumb Spirit of the Leopard shrine because you cannot even kill a bunny who is walking away without using your pounce attack? Yeah, frustrating.

Better: R.O.H.AN. Online (Vanilla client/release).
By far and beyond the best ranged class implementation I have ever seen in a fantasy MMO. Ever. More games should see this style and roll with it. Both ranged options (ranger and scout) are absolutely stellar in play.
It was undoubtedly the most intense, skill-based, raw-power adrenaline race/class in the game, and definitely the most fun I’ve ever had playing a character in my gaming experience with MMO’s (sadly game management really messed up classes/PvP).

Worse? I don’t have one. With over a decade of MMO gaming and fifteen different games in my repertoire, no game has done worse at the ranger/hunter class/spec than GW2. Pitiful diversity, boring mechanics, and underwhelming performance across the board aside from PvE/trash mobs make me suspect the game’s class concept developers have absolutely no idea how to handle this class.