Guild Wars 2

I hear a lot of complaints about rangers.

Speaking from a pure PvE side, I fail to see why ppl say rangers are so bad.

I mean, to me they seem to be a nice balanced class, not exceeding on any role, not sucking at any too. I have one lvl80 myself, done most of the zones, a few dungs… not in a single moment I felt underpowered.

Apart from necro(its on my To Do list tho), I played with all classes and felt that the class that is in serious need for love, by far, is engineer, not ranger. What brings me back to what I’d like to ask:

Again, from a PvE PoV, are rangers that bad? Why?

Well from what I have heard, Engineer is also in need of serious love. I don’t have one, so I cannot say for sure.

As for Ranger, where to start? Look at the multiple threads around here and you can get a good idea what the problems are. I will tell you from my experience, the higher end of PvE slaps the ragner around and laughs about it. Open world events or farming is fine, but go into Crucible of Eternity and watch your pet become mincemeat. Or fractals 10+. Pets have no agony resist and cannot dodge, so fractal AoE/agaony will decimate them instantly. Any dungeon with large amounts of AoE will kill your pet before they can do anything. Swapping them only works every 20 seconds, and recalling them is not fast enough. So you have a dead pet more often than not. Also, so many skills are bugged ATM, like Lick Wounds, Sic’ Em, etc. Search and Resccue would be an amazing skill if your pet didnt die horribly while trying to rez someone. Trying to watch a pet revive someone while in the fight against Bloomhunger is hilarious. The biggest problem with rangers are pets, but you wont really notice until you do higher level dungeons with massive AoE or attacks that one shot anything. You, as a player, can see these and react to them. Pets cannot and get destroyed, taking a lot of your potential with them. My best advice to you is to play another class, once they are a high level you will begin to see the horrible differences. That is what I did. I played nothing but ranger, did all dungeons and got 100% world exploration, and got full exotic armors and weapons (lots of them for different situations). Then I made some other characters and elveled them up, and the difference was unreal. I WILL NOT play my ranger again until the class has been fixed, because it is awful right now. Many people wil say L2P, but they are trolls/fanboys. Because ATM, there is absolutley no reason to play a ranger over anything else in PvE.

Ranger’s issue isnt PVE, nor sPVP. We can make it in there.

The ranger’s issue lies within the fact that people think that classes who fail in WvW, fail everywhere else.

The ranger simply suck at fighting WvW style, because other classes got better balancing in that area of the game. Take a ranger into PVE, and play WvW style, and you’d prolly never die, since you’d be efficiently dodging and outputting tremendous damage, all while healing allies… sadly its so easy to forget playing WvW style, even when you are going PVE

I see you have a point with pets. But not THAT point to say “OMG Rangers FTL” as if pets were vital to core class mechanics. AFAIC I’ve never seen any pet-centered build.

I dont take dungeons, even more Fractals into consideration. Since I tend to see the difficult in dungeons a lil overkill since I think 1-shot mechanics are being abused there.

And, fractals are even worse. Agony is an artificial gate that has absolutely nothing to say about how good a class is, or how good you play. Its just a matter to have “x” item to past this point.

Just like the Mursaat in GW1, when you got your armor infused, I saw they were not that difficult..

Pets can also be one-shotted in dungeons easily due to high damage AoE attacks. And a ranger without a pet is only a half DPS.

This thread has plenty of information about this topic:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Dungeon-Patch-Discussion-2-26/page/6#post1568959

When you think about it this way the problem starts to seem more obvious.

Harder PvE has it’s damage output tuned so that the player feels compelled to dodge and kite, which is something a pet can’t do. Pets were mechanically lifted from tank n’ spank games and put into an active combat game without adding new mechanics to support that transition. So the more content demands dodging and kiting from the player, the more the pet mechanic starts to feel disjointed and out of order.

And just to be clear; this isn’t to say ‘your pet is broken because it can’t survive the 1 hit KOs’. It’s not the 1 hit KOs; having to manage those is realistically approachable, reasonable for balance reasons, and dare I say almost fun. It’s having to manage the 1 hit KOs on top of having to micromanage all the other incidental white damage hits that truly drives you to the point of frustration.

For what it’s worth; adding pet regeneration into your build aligns the stars and snaps everything into place, causing Ranger to start to play like how you’d expect it to even in harder content. That’s because the regen begins to compensate for the missing dodge and kiting. So it’s not a problem that lacks a work-around, just a very restrictive and unfair one.

/edit: clarity

Agrios.1957:

I see you have a point with pets. But not THAT point to say “OMG Rangers FTL” as if pets were vital to core class mechanics. AFAIC I’ve never seen any pet-centered build.

I dont take dungeons, even more Fractals into consideration. Since I tend to see the difficult in dungeons a lil overkill since I think 1-shot mechanics are being abused there.

And, fractals are even worse. Agony is an artificial gate that has absolutely nothing to say about how good a class is, or how good you play. Its just a matter to have “x” item to past this point.

Just like the Mursaat in GW1, when you got your armor infused, I saw they were not that difficult..

If you ignore all that, then there is really no problem with the class. But see, unlike GW1, your pet CANNOT avoid agony. If they get hit with it, they’re dead. Every time, unless you can switch them in a hurry, but it will be very taxing. And the one shot mechanics are where the pets really show their worthlessness. So go ahead and ignore those ocean sized problems and yeah, the ranger is just fine. But don’t be surprised when PUG groups complain or kick you for seemingly no reason.

Agrios.1957:

I see you have a point with pets. But not THAT point to say “OMG Rangers FTL” as if pets were vital to core class mechanics. AFAIC I’ve never seen any pet-centered build.

I dont take dungeons, even more Fractals into consideration. Since I tend to see the difficult in dungeons a lil overkill since I think 1-shot mechanics are being abused there.

And, fractals are even worse. Agony is an artificial gate that has absolutely nothing to say about how good a class is, or how good you play. Its just a matter to have “x” item to past this point.

Just like the Mursaat in GW1, when you got your armor infused, I saw they were not that difficult..

Except Pets are a vital part of the class’ core mechanic and all builds are inherently Pet-centric because they’re responsible for 30-50% of the Ranger’s potential DPS.
The inherent flaw with pets is that they’re too much attached to the Ranger class in GW2. In GW1, pets were completely optional (at the cost of a skill slot), you could bring them while not speccing in BM and they would suck horribly, but the Ranger would still be of use to the team as either a decent damager, interrupter, etc…On the other hand, speccing in BM would mean you weren’t speccing in Marksmanship, or not as much anyway and deal less damage as a Ranger. It was a fair trade-off once all the Pet issues were resolved, like having to bring 2 skill slots for a pet by linking Heal skills to Pet Rez skills and having your pet if you had a Pet Rez. A BM specced ranger could do serious damage through his pet, but at the risk of losing the pet. Eventually, BM builds were viable outside of specialized builds like B/P way in Tombs.
In GW2, Pets are forced upon the Ranger and you’re expected to DEAL WITH IT. In high-level content, the current pet is insufficient. You’re basically forced to spec 30 points in BM to get some survivability out of it, and that’s just blown away in Fractals. As a result, Ranger pets are mostly dead and the inherent mechanic that they deal a substantial amount of our damage becomes our greatest handicap.
Compare Ranger GS damage with the GS damage of every other class and start crying. The same goes for most of our other weapons. We’re literally Master of None to the point even Warriors have better Longbow skills, damage AND utility in them. Added to that is several of our support skills rely on the pet, none of which is any good. The traps don’t use pets, neither do LR, QZ and SS and those are pretty much the only skills worth using. Signet of the Hunt to tun around, but not really in combat.

SirJack.4760:

As a result, Ranger pets are mostly dead and the inherent mechanic that they deal a substantial amount of our damage becomes our greatest handicap.

This is basically the entire “issue” in a nutshell.
Where in other MMO’s – GW1 included – the pet was a choice, here it’s a must. You have no alternative. You cannot stow them permanently. You cannot forever idle them either.
And not because the mechanics don’t allow for it. It’s solely because they carry part of your damage potential! If you leave them to idle, you’ll still do yourself short.

In most dungeons you can learn when to pull the pet back. It just takes patience and proper timing to do so. Sadly, each time you pull it back, you bashed F3. During that time, you’re unlikely to have done anything but auto-attacking.
More importantly, going melee in some situations is an utter pain. If you deal with a boss with nearby AoE, you can dodge backwards.
Hah, can’t touch this! Oh no, Mr Mittens! DO NOT KEEP STANDING IN THAT GIANT, FIERY CIRCLE OF DOO- Ooooh come on!
That giant pile of ash once labeled Mr Mittens the generic pet is now the rough 25% of total damage you lost. Isn’t it a joy(!)

What’d really “fix” these problems is either having them buff the ranger and then nerf the pet’s damage to have them serve as nothing but a few extra utility skills… or for them to introduce a way to make pets more movable. I’d use the ranged pets more often if I could handpick their location properly.

Agrios.1957:

I see you have a point with pets. But not THAT point to say “OMG Rangers FTL” as if pets were vital to core class mechanics.

Pets are not vital to core class mechanics? WTH pets are the class mechanics. 40% of your dmg comes from pet and if BM specced it is alot more.