Guild Wars 2

Hi Guys,

I am looking for some advice. I main Thief and love it, but i think i need a change. I have tried warrior but did not like the play style ect ect so i dont play it.

I do BOTH PvE and PvP (on Thief) and have a great time ect. (Just going to say now this has nothing to do with the latest patch about playing something else than Thief)

My question is – Where are Rangers are the moment ? I am going to be leveling a new char soon and am thinking of a Ranger. I love the range aspect of the class and its always been my go-to which is why i play D/D & SB Thief (Played Hunter in WoW and Demon Hunter in Diablo3). It just seems to me that when ever i come across a Ranger in either WvW or PvP i tend to melt them quite quick on my thief. Are they just bad players ? Bad Build? Are thiefs just a more powerful class ? Are Rangers capable of melting other classes?

Any feed back is appreciated!

Savaa

PvE: fantastic, dungeons and all.
PvP: one of the strongest adversaries.
WvW: debatable, roles vary from high dps – squishy, roamer and difficult to kill, but in both formats the contribution to group play is a topic of much debate (positive and negative).

Mechanics: unlike thief who gets to fight via melee/range via stealth+teleports, rangers depend on range/melee via pet+dodges+survival+weapon+dodge+survival+pet rotation. The more skilled you are the more pressure you put on your enemies, eventually this rotation will become a never ending burst on which you can and will bring down your enemy, if you do not make serious mistakes. You combat experience, ability to use the jack-of-all-trades mechanic in rangers, your pet micro-management and the build you use are all deciding factors. The only way to really know if you will be ‘mr squishy’ ranger or ‘i hate this guy he is too good’ ranger will depend on whether or not you can kill over 50% of the thieves you find in pvp and/or in wvw by yourself.

Honestly, rangers are in a much better spot than where they used to be. The problem? Skill level is still quite high for pvp and wvw. Sadly most players cannot cope with that, so those are the ones you love to melt in pvp/wvw. Now rangers are no thieves, there is no melting other professions, what if the enemy player is super good? What if they are very bad at their profession? If melting someone is something that applies to doing big numbers then yes they can do big numbers, but not like a warrior or a thief does. Rangers have a pet, the pet will always share the -cup of dps- with you. If you trait 100% berserker and gear, then your pet will still have a part in this, it will empty most of its cup but still keep some water. If you trait for beast mastery, your cup will be like … 30% and the pet about 70% or more, in terms of raw numbers alone. That is seen as a disadvantage by many players, but I see it as an advantage. No one pays attention to the pet, that extra dps although split, its very useful when you know how to work with it. Using fear on an enemy while you focus solely on a burst is ideal, especially if the pet is a canine, then the first thing they do is stomp the enemy… you can imagine it.

Don’t mislead the OP.

Rangers are a decent class. And we bring huge mix of mechanics. But we aren’t best in any of that.

Yes – Ranger can melt other classes – but that’s not what sPvP is about. There it is about staying alive on point longer than the enemy. And Rangers are one of the worst at it. Because our melee damage cannot compare to other melee classes and our Ranged damage has no use if we have to camp a point.

In PvE the Ranger community is hated. Everyone runs so-called “BearBow” which is super comfortable but doesn’t bring anything – not even damage. In PvE dungeons you’d like to stick to melee – which you can actually play your Thief if this is the case. In world encounters we are absolutely gorgeous. It’s our job to stay at range and flank it – and we are good at it.

We can fulfill this role even in WvW – without any problem (pet’s are useless here, though).

But you should never start a Ranger if you haven’t fallen in love with him or you don’t intend to improve for the rest of your life… Because there’s a proverb that goes on since GW1.
“If anything goes wrong – just blame the Ranger.”

Coming from a Thief you will probably find the Ranger incredibly boring to play. Especially if you play a power build. Each weapon for the Ranger class has the #1 skill as the largest damage with few exceptions. This means a lot of your time will be spent auto attacking while strafing in circles waiting for a reason to use your other skills. There are no real combos to string together. No burst to contribute. Very little AE.

PvE issues for the class are overstated and the class does fine overall, but you’ll need to play melee. PvP the class is pretty good but you’ll likely still end up with a bunker condi build like everyone else. WvW roaming is fine because the class does well in PvP. But if you plan to do stuff with larger groups (not just talking zergs, but even just guild functions of 10 or so against others in WvW) the class just doesn’t contribute enough to be worth bringing.

I wouldn’t suggest Ranger for an alt, but at the very least try it out in PvP to see if it’s something you enjoy. It will be up to you to decide after that.

The players above post a lot of valid points. Truth is rangers are probably the most hated on profession in the game, and may even find it hard to find parties in dungeons. Most of the hate is overhyped in my opinion and I feel as though people jump on the hate wagon just because it’s the cool thing to do, without any personal experience or basis. They just heard someone hate on rangers and decided to form their opinions off of that. Rangers have received some quality of life improvements in this last patch, its not “Perfect” but the overall class is a bit better than it was before the patch. I mainly play ranger in sPVP and don’t have much experience elsewhere with them.

I tried a couple of dungeons but didn’t find them as enjoyable as I did on my Ele or guardian. I don’t blame the class for this but rather the stacking meta that people have when going into dungeons, which I don’t think A-Net really intended. I’ve also tried WvW a bit with the ranger but with your pet being a part of your damage and it dying really quickly in a large zerg fight it kind of handicaps you. Roaming they do well as managing your pet is a much easier and the fight is much more under your control.

My experience in sPVP isn’t usually about bursting an enemy down as you would with a thief or an ele, but it was more of being able to provide constant pressure to where the enemy couldn’t out-sustain it. I’ve tried the meta spirit ranger and bunker trapper builds but I didn’t find them as enjoyable as a roamer/debunker. That being said its not impossible for you to hit for big numbers, I see 8-9K Maul hits and 5k Tail Swipe (drake attack) fairly commonly as a power ranger, but its not really what the class was meant for.

Rangers are very good duelists, they excel in 1v1 fights, and they have some of the coolest weapon sets in game as far as skills/animations/abilities go imo.

If you like being the under-dog and receiving the hate only to shove it back in their face after you stomp them, then yes ranger is for you