Hi I’m Dathaul. Those from my server and the people I’ve fought might recognize me as that awkward melee ranger who you frequently see rolling with drakes. I spend A LOT of time complaining about unique weaknesses that the ranger class suffers from and find myself often taking flak from people who in my opinion, in ignorance, think the ranger class is actually at parity with other classes in a fight. (Of course they are usually spvp players.) I’m the first to admit, I’m beating against the stream rolling melee as a ranger, when the class is made so dependent on range. I happily accept that weakness and disadvantage for a play style that I like and the difficulties of using a melee ranger are not my complaint at all at this time. Let me say to my credit, I have spent months (probably about 4-5 months now) building a melee ranger of incredible competence and fighting in solo roaming in WvW vs. anywhere from 1, to multiple opponents. (4 to 5). Against those that lacked skill I often found myself dropping upwards of 2-4 fully exotic geared level 80s going all out and using terrain to advantage, fighting smart.. and hard. Mind you, they are always HARD, exhausting fights. I myself possess NO ascended gear at this time, so I don’t rely on supposedly op stat differences to defeat my foes at this time. I’ve probably explored the depths of the ranger’s strengths and weaknesses more than the vast majority of the ranger community and in greater detail, and it shows from the fact that I have no other character over level 23, and no ascended gear at this time. (Though I am FINALLY working on it.) I have put painful hours into designing a ranger capable of fighting well against every single type of opponent and build, and capable of besting every other ranger in battle using skill and timing, and at the same time different from the cookie cutter builds. Maximum mobility, high levels of tankiness, a 30-some odd second stunbreak and damage/damage reduction. The keys to success as a melee character with no stealth capability.
Despite my efforts, I’m sure there are other rangers who could say very similar things. And most of these rangers, I am sure will share the same complaints as I. I’d even love to test it out more in spvp against other rangers if not for the fact that the stat distributions of vitality-tougness-healing power-power are completely unavailable in SPvP, thereby breaking mine(and many other good builds) when thrown into that environment. I talk as a very experienced WvW solo player. And while its certainly true that WvW players on average have far less skill, there are some solo roamer’s I’ve fought out there who I believe could throw down with the best of SPvP players and win, without needing Perplexity runes and torment sigils or ascended gear. So let’s not delude ourselves as if there were no skilled players or elitists in WvW and use that as an excuse to claim the ranger class does not suffer from broken and bad mechanics but rather from L2P issues. I’m not arrogant but confident to happily myself say I have no l2p issues having taken the hard path for rangers, and yet having found great success in it.
At this point, the only things I can complain about are BROKEN MECHANICS that weaken the class. I’m happily open to counter-builds, class weaknesses and the like. I get excited when I see someone targeting my pet specifically and trying new things. It’s great. I do not like it however, that so many necessary functions available to other classes are broken by poor design and made EASILY exploitable to defeat every single ranger in skilled combat with minimal effort, no matter what build someone with high skill level on other classes rolls.
So again.. as a bit of an elitist, and one who would hold himself as being at the pinnacle as a melee ranger I find it disheartening how many people think the ranger class needs at best “band aid” solutions to be at par with the other classes. So here I will spell out many of the classes major weaknesses that will get it burned in a pro-level fight 99% of the time. (We’re not talking about meeting up with counter-builds here, literal class weaknesses.) Introduction over. On to the good stuff, or rather the bad stuff.
To be continued…
Ferguson’s Crossing server.
(edited by Detharos.3157)