Guild Wars 2

Level your ranger, and in 3 months…come back and read your post.

I don’t have any real PvP or WvW ranger experience, but I can tell you that they’re much less useful in dungeons than most other classes.

The problem with rangers is that pets are 25% of their damage, but are almost always dead, and that ranger utilities are far less superior than other classes’ utilities.

The only time rangers shine is in open-world solo PvE, since bear pets can tank almost anything. Keep in mind, this is coming from someone who has played ranger 1000+ hours.

yes, once you get your ranger leveled out and play some WvW and try (key word there, try) to get a dungeon group, you’ll be going back to your warrior really fast. The problems with ranger’s is not the low level game, it’s the high end game and the WvW battles where your pet (which is 40% of your damage) is either dead or sitting around doing nothing because it can’t go down the stairs and out the gate’s to attack someone, or it likes to run through area effects because it thinks it’s funny to die quickly leaving you with only 60% of your potential damage. Or spirits that are a joke and don’t last two seconds because they die in one hit. Or range damage that doesn’t do much damage at all when you compare to the burst potential of thief’s and warrior from range and gap closers that they use that put out high damage. Come back on here after your all leveled up and have experienced this, then see if what you wrote is correct or not.

Sorry but dude, mind your grammar/punctuation. It’s pretty darn hard to read/take seriously, especially when you’re ranting.
As others said, rangers are actually quite tanky.

Sorry, but killing trash mobs and rolling in a few hotjoins isn’t enough experience to have an opinion on this with any weight.
Granted, their are people in the ranger community who counterbalance the negativity by showing some of the things ranger can do well.

But overall, jumping in, gaining a few levels and enjoying yourself then saying the class is fine is just unhealthy for the future development of the game. Developers need feedback on both ends of the spectrum to provide future content for the game, and that feedback doesn’t need to get convoluted with casual anecdotal experiences that could possibly over power the actual feedback being given, resulting in no progress ever being made.

It isn’t that I personally am not happy you enjoy your gameplay experience. But all you are doing by saying “I have fun playing it and I seem to do okay, so everybody else needs to be quiet because they are doing it wrong” is the last thing the ranger forum needs, because all it will do is start yet another endless argument that results in no constructive feedback whatsoever, bogging down any potential progress even further than it really already is going on 7 months after release not counting the beta.

Rarely do I agree with the vocal minority (because…well…you know how they are) but in this case they are essentially right-chewing out the devs however is stupid, ignorant, nonsensical, bordering kitten and usually done by people who consider themselves ‘veterans’ of a game less than one year old or ‘pros’ or ‘elitists’…each term doesn’t do them justice…I call them protards-professional kitten but I digress. I was ok with the ranger (the profession felt uninspired imo-similar to the warrior or necro) until I hit 30 and did AC-at the time I couldn’t quite explain it but I just felt plain useless. Initially I wanted to use spirits, but they are stationary by default so that was a serious limitation, however seeing there was a grand master trait at 60 to make them mobile I decided to play until then and see how they worked out….I never got to 60. I kept going back to AC right up to lvl 55 trying different set ups; shouts…no, survival…no, spirits….don’t even consider before lvl 60, some kind of mix…you end up feeling that your toon has no focus. Eventually I tried traps-long before this suddenly popular trap build…however I asked myself-wouldn’t an elementalist be better? I mean essentially all I’m doing is laying down two combo fields and an ele can do that while providing more buffs and utility to the party (Notice I didn’t mention damage-could care less about those white numbers. What I want is to contribute meaningfully to the team, so if my white numbers don’t add up to much at least let me be able to buff/heal/debuff extremely effectively)

Now the pets….good Lord the pets. As far as I’m concerned the problem isn’t just a drop in damage when the pet is dead-it seems some people forget pets have other attributes (most noticeably the melee pets). AOE heal on moas, knockdown on canines etc-those additional bonuses are also gone when the pet is dead or sitting in the back row to avoid getting killed. Ranged pets (at least the ones I had at the time) had significantly less impressive/useful utilities-and damage for those who squeal at white numbers, so while keeping them alive wasn’t too hard, again, I just felt I wasn’t contributing meaningfully.

That was of course pve-not a huge fan of pvp but I did dabble in spvp a while back (on a thief and on a ranger) and in terms of pvp I’d have to say they’re not that bad from my experience. I don’t usually pvp, so obviously it’s not my strong point (not that there’s any real challenge in pvp itself, but some tricks and expected player reactions and behaviour and such I didn’t have), but I did manage to take out the professions I’ve encountered (thief, mesmer, engineer and warrior) 1v1 without feeling like I’m at an innate disadvantage, so take that however you want. Could they all be bad players? Possible. Could they all be good players? Unlikely. Could they be a mix between new/bad/good players? Most likely

Wvw doesn’t mean anything imo because unless you’re part of a guild or wvw community with voice communication all you’re doing is running with a crowd of people and pressing number keys at the people with red names.

Imbune.5497:

Rarely do I agree with the vocal minority (because…well…you know how they are) but in this case they are essentially right-chewing out the devs however is stupid, ignorant, nonsensical, bordering kitten and usually done by people who consider themselves ‘veterans’ of a game less than one year old or ‘pros’ or ‘elitists’…each term doesn’t do them justice…I call them protards-professional kitten but I digress. I was ok with the ranger (the profession felt uninspired imo-similar to the warrior or necro) until I hit 30 and did AC-at the time I couldn’t quite explain it but I just felt plain useless. Initially I wanted to use spirits, but they are stationary by default so that was a serious limitation, however seeing there was a grand master trait at 60 to make them mobile I decided to play until then and see how they worked out….I never got to 60. I kept going back to AC right up to lvl 55 trying different set ups; shouts…no, survival…no, spirits….don’t even consider before lvl 60, some kind of mix…you end up feeling that your toon has no focus. Eventually I tried traps-long before this suddenly popular trap build…however I asked myself-wouldn’t an elementalist be better? I mean essentially all I’m doing is laying down two combo fields and an ele can do that while providing more buffs and utility to the party (Notice I didn’t mention damage-could care less about those white numbers. What I want is to contribute meaningfully to the team, so if my white numbers don’t add up to much at least let me be able to buff/heal/debuff extremely effectively)

Now the pets….good Lord the pets. As far as I’m concerned the problem isn’t just a drop in damage when the pet is dead-it seems some people forget pets have other attributes (most noticeably the melee pets). AOE heal on moas, knockdown on canines etc-those additional bonuses are also gone when the pet is dead or sitting in the back row to avoid getting killed. Ranged pets (at least the ones I had at the time) had significantly less impressive/useful utilities-and damage for those who squeal at white numbers, so while keeping them alive wasn’t too hard, again, I just felt I wasn’t contributing meaningfully.

That was of course pve-not a huge fan of pvp but I did dabble in spvp a while back (on a thief and on a ranger) and in terms of pvp I’d have to say they’re not that bad from my experience. I don’t usually pvp, so obviously it’s not my strong point (not that there’s any real challenge in pvp itself, but some tricks and expected player reactions and behaviour and such I didn’t have), but I did manage to take out the professions I’ve encountered (thief, mesmer, engineer and warrior) 1v1 without feeling like I’m at an innate disadvantage, so take that however you want. Could they all be bad players? Possible. Could they all be good players? Unlikely. Could they be a mix between new/bad/good players? Most likely

Wvw doesn’t mean anything imo because unless you’re part of a guild or wvw community with voice communication all you’re doing is running with a crowd of people and pressing number keys at the people with red names.

I don’t think more than 5% of the playerbase has the skill to beat a dungeon (even AC) on their first try with their first level 30 avatar. You’re going to have a bad time, particularly besides it’s likely you don’t know how to find a decent group. Group setup is a big deal…the loss or addition of a good player of any profession can and usually will have a huge impact on the success of the dungeon run. Believe me, I’ve seen it, having run roughly 200 dungeons to help pay for Bolt—and no, I didn’t run CoF path 1 constantly. I have dungeon master and ran every dungeon in the game. But ya, I did run CoF A LOT.

You’re doing it wrong. 20/20/0/0/30 with signet of the wild, quickening zephyr, and Sick ‘Em. Use stalker and jaguar. Use sword/warhorn (learn to dodge and learn boss tells or else you’ll die. I can sword up Subject Alpha…look, if I can do that, I’m sick of people’s excuses about ranger dodges…ranger has some of the best dodge ability in the game), and use axe/axe. Make sure you trait Honed Axes and wear all berserker gear. I have over 3200 attack with this setup and have completed 6 minute CoF runs with other experienced players.

I am leveling FOTM with few struggles and in general doing great.

jcbroe.4329:

Sorry, but killing trash mobs and rolling in a few hotjoins isn’t enough experience to have an opinion on this with any weight.

Quite possibly the most arrogant and repulsive way you could have began your post-basically you’re saying ‘your opinion doesn’t matter-here listen to mine’ The rest of your post has merit, but tbh if I were the OP I would have stopped reading right after the first sentence.

Also, have a little faith in the intelligence of the developers-I hardly think they’ll be putting the balance of the entire class on a player who, by his own account , just started the profession (players who just picked up a profession usually state that anyway) and hasn’t even done a single dungeon with it. Even if they start a million threads saying ‘hey I just started the profession and really like it so far-are they really that bad?’ most of the responses within the thread (you know because the devs will be aware of the general trend of the responses and not just the title) will say ‘well they’re fine for w at lower level, however for x,y,z at higher levels their effectiveness suffers greatly’

I love my Ranger more than my Mesmer simply because of the way it looks and how the playstyle feels. However, I prefer playing my Mesmer still as I have to play much harder to get the same effects out of my Ranger that I do my Mesmer. My Mesmer’s mechanics always work. My Ranger mechanics don’t. My Mesmer has a plethora of useful utilities to choose from and unique weapon skills. My Ranger does not.

I believe more evidence of the class issues is the devs admitting them.

Finally, we have some of our best Rangers (i.e. Sol, nerva, etc.) that even say the class is broken. “But they do well in WvW”, you say. Well yes, they do. Now imagine what they would do if they had spent their time mastering a sword+dagger thief, a mesmer, etc.. The Ranger forums would be even sadder and the other class forums would be abuzz with how awesome these players are.

Chopps.5047:

I don’t think more than 5% of the playerbase has the skill to beat a dungeon (even AC) on their first try with their first level 30 avatar. You’re going to have a bad time, particularly besides it’s likely you don’t know how to find a decent group. Group setup is a big deal…the loss or addition of a good player of any profession can and usually will have a huge impact on the success of the dungeon run. Believe me, I’ve seen it, having run roughly 200 dungeons to help pay for Bolt—and no, I didn’t run CoF path 1 constantly. I have dungeon master and ran every dungeon in the game. But ya, I did run CoF A LOT.

You’re doing it wrong. 20/20/0/0/30 with signet of the wild, quickening zephyr, and Sick ‘Em. Use stalker and jaguar. Use sword/warhorn (learn to dodge and learn boss tells or else you’ll die. I can sword up Subject Alpha…look, if I can do that, I’m sick of people’s excuses about ranger dodges…ranger has some of the best dodge ability in the game), and use axe/axe. Make sure you trait Honed Axes and wear all berserker gear. I have over 3200 attack with this setup and have completed 6 minute CoF runs with other experienced players.

I am leveling FOTM with few struggles and in general doing great.

I thank you for the civilized counter-response, however where did I say it was my first time running the dungeon? Or that it was my first lvl 30? And even if it was my first time, I did say I tried it repeatedly through to lvl 50+. There are a couple of things wrong with your second paragraph-firstly stemming from the notion that I’m inexperienced. Another problem is you’re indicating there’s only one ‘right’ way to use the profession-and given what they said they’re trying to accomplish in the game is a huge problem in and of itself. Thirdly the setup you gave requires 70 trait points, in other words, lvl 80 toon-so the implication is you must be lvl 80 on a ranger to do lvl 30/35 content. Your weapon advice has the same problems as mentioned-one way to play…and where did I mention anything about dodges-or heck lack of survivability for that matter? Lastly the setup in your second paragraph assumes damage is the be-all-end-all goal for all players (I for one do not care for speed runs-I still play the game to have fun and it’s hard to have fun when you’re rushing or treating it like a chore imo).

My original post was long enough so I left out a few things-surviving on the ranger isn’t a problem for me, mainly because, as you said we have tons of vigor and lots of evades-but for me surviving and not really aiding the party in general isn’t what I considered ideal. That was my main issue with the ranger-wasn’t damage, wasn’t survivability, it was what I could do in a group to increase the group’s effectiveness

Sebrent.3625:

I love my Ranger more than my Mesmer simply because of the way it looks and how the playstyle feels. However, I prefer playing my Mesmer still as I have to play much harder to get the same effects out of my Ranger that I do my Mesmer. My Mesmer’s mechanics always work. My Ranger mechanics don’t. My Mesmer has a plethora of useful utilities to choose from and unique weapon skills. My Ranger does not.

I believe more evidence of the class issues is the devs admitting them.

Finally, we have some of our best Rangers (i.e. Sol, nerva, etc.) that even say the class is broken. “But they do well in WvW”, you say. Well yes, they do. Now imagine what they would do if they had spent their time mastering a sword+dagger thief, a mesmer, etc.. The Ranger forums would be even sadder and the other class forums would be abuzz with how awesome these players are.

Why is Sol or nerva the best?

Imbune.5497:

Chopps.5047:

I don’t think more than 5% of the playerbase has the skill to beat a dungeon (even AC) on their first try with their first level 30 avatar. You’re going to have a bad time, particularly besides it’s likely you don’t know how to find a decent group. Group setup is a big deal…the loss or addition of a good player of any profession can and usually will have a huge impact on the success of the dungeon run. Believe me, I’ve seen it, having run roughly 200 dungeons to help pay for Bolt—and no, I didn’t run CoF path 1 constantly. I have dungeon master and ran every dungeon in the game. But ya, I did run CoF A LOT.

You’re doing it wrong. 20/20/0/0/30 with signet of the wild, quickening zephyr, and Sick ‘Em. Use stalker and jaguar. Use sword/warhorn (learn to dodge and learn boss tells or else you’ll die. I can sword up Subject Alpha…look, if I can do that, I’m sick of people’s excuses about ranger dodges…ranger has some of the best dodge ability in the game), and use axe/axe. Make sure you trait Honed Axes and wear all berserker gear. I have over 3200 attack with this setup and have completed 6 minute CoF runs with other experienced players.

I am leveling FOTM with few struggles and in general doing great.

I thank you for the civilized counter-response, however where did I say it was my first time running the dungeon? Or that it was my first lvl 30? And even if it was my first time, I did say I tried it repeatedly through to lvl 50+. There are a couple of things wrong with your second paragraph-firstly stemming from the notion that I’m inexperienced. Another problem is you’re indicating there’s only one ‘right’ way to use the profession-and given what they said they’re trying to accomplish in the game is a huge problem in and of itself. Thirdly the setup you gave requires 70 trait points, in other words, lvl 80 toon-so the implication is you must be lvl 80 on a ranger to do lvl 30/35 content. Your weapon advice has the same problems as mentioned-one way to play…and where did I mention anything about dodges-or heck lack of survivability for that matter? Lastly the setup in your second paragraph assumes damage is the be-all-end-all goal for all players (I for one do not care for speed runs-I still play the game to have fun and it’s hard to have fun when you’re rushing or treating it like a chore imo).

My original post was long enough so I left out a few things-surviving on the ranger isn’t a problem for me, mainly because, as you said we have tons of vigor and lots of evades-but for me surviving and not really aiding the party in general isn’t what I considered ideal. That was my main issue with the ranger-wasn’t damage, wasn’t survivability, it was what I could do in a group to increase the group’s effectiveness

You’re just not right, I’m sorry. You are doing it wrong. I have 1300 hours on ranger and crafted Bolt almost solely with ranger. You’re just wrong, I don’t know how else to put it.

Sol and nerva aren’t the only ones that are good, but they are two of our well-known great Rangers. I learned about Sol by asking around Ehmry Bay and people who didn’t even play the Ranger class knew about Sol despite Sol being on Maguuma. Many even admitted to being stomped quite often by Sol … and most don’t like admitting to being stomped by a Ranger. There’s actually a thread on the ehmry.com forum posted by Unholy (plays Ranger) making fun of one of the Thieves for “getting stomped by a Ranger” … that post has a link to Sol’s Ranger stomping Cynical of [GH] (Grindhouse Gaming) on his Thief.

Chopps, if you’re going to quote that much, actually post something meaningful to read. If you’re going to disagree with someone, at least state what you disagree with and why. Communication please.

Just dont wright this kind of thing in this thread. 7 months thousand of players who played thousands of hours on their rangers complain and beg for at least minor fixes. Send bug reports. Struggle with awful pet AI. And after that some pro ranger like you starts a topic like “i ve killed first mob and it was fun”? Just delete it or whatever.

Foreverlostdan.7059:

Geshque.1326:

Just dont wright this kind of thing in this thread. 7 months thousand of players who played thousands of hours on their rangers complain and beg for at least minor fixes. Send bug reports. Struggle with awful pet AI. And after that some pro ranger like you starts a topic like “i ve killed first mob and it was fun”? Just delete it or whatever.

Dude, I am not saying I am some kind of pro. I just did not see the reason for all the negative posts. Are there problems yes. Do they need addressing yes? If you are building a new toon wouldn’t you want to know what Joy / hate is soon to visit you? All I am after is whether or not this is a worthwhile character or am I wasting my time?

You seem to already have knowledge on how a majority of Rangers feel about their class. You mention all the “negative posts”. You’re not going to get different answers in your thread just because you made a new one. Rangers are still far behind every other class in the game in just about any aspect.

Summary- OP hasn’t got the ranger to lvl 80 nor has he spent a significant time on it. Talks random gibberish and says ranger is fine and to leave the devs alone yet he hasn’t a clue about ranger class.

Most people dont post builds on here as they figure out their own because all ranger players have their own style, only time there are builds is to show ranger class isnt completely useless and people take those ideas into their own builds.

Foreverlostdan.7059:

Geshque.1326:

Just dont wright this kind of thing in this thread. 7 months thousand of players who played thousands of hours on their rangers complain and beg for at least minor fixes. Send bug reports. Struggle with awful pet AI. And after that some pro ranger like you starts a topic like “i ve killed first mob and it was fun”? Just delete it or whatever.

Dude, I am not saying I am some kind of pro. I just did not see the reason for all the negative posts. Are there problems yes. Do they need addressing yes? If you are building a new toon wouldn’t you want to know what Joy / hate is soon to visit you? All I am after is whether or not this is a worthwhile character or am I wasting my time?

If there is so many negative posts then there is a reason for that and nobody needs to consider your opinion. Nothing personal, but for every flamr there is a spark.

Robyn Yew.6072:

Summary- OP hasn’t got the ranger to lvl 80 nor has he spent a significant time on it. Talks random gibberish and says ranger is fine and to leave the devs alone yet he hasn’t a clue about ranger class.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHmvkRoEowc

Most people dont post builds on here as they figure out their own because all ranger players have their own style, only time there are builds is to show ranger class isnt completely useless and people take those ideas into their own builds.

Exactly

You only learn by playing.

What? lol seriously? I normally main a Guardian and love being godlike but my first run through AC as a ranger was still kitten easy. Now my ranger is lvl 80 with exotic weapons and 2 exotic armour pieces its even easier.

Just learn to manage your pets. I do quite well in WvW as well. Though to be fair I use signets for utilities as it makes it easier to manage the pets

KensaiZen.3740:

What? lol seriously? I normally main a Guardian and love being godlike but my first run through AC as a ranger was still kitten easy. Now my ranger is lvl 80 with exotic weapons and 2 exotic armour pieces its even easier.

Just learn to manage your pets. I do quite well in WvW as well. Though to be fair I use signets for utilities as it makes it easier to manage the pets

Facepalm post from person with “2 exotic armor pieces”. So that is the gap between you “The One who learned to play” and all other poor rangers who did not manage to do it since launch.