Longbow is awful outside of WvW and Greatsword’s damage was nerfed in half about a month before release. You can make just about anything work in hotjoin 8v8, but (no offense) that’s not really competitive PvP.
In tPvP, OP is correct, Ranger is one of the weakest classes in the game right now. Very few teams run one in competitive 5v5.
The Ranger’s primary role is mostly roamer, but Thieves do that job better because they have higher mobility, better 1v1 capability, higher burst damage output, and in certain builds, better group buffs.
Rangers can also play point defense, but a defense specced Guardian is better at that job because it has better defensive capabilities, more ways to control opponents and knock them off control points, and far better group buffs.
Part of this is that Thieves, Guardians, and Mesmers are unquestionably the strongest classes in the game for tPvP right now. There aren’t any dedicated 5v5 teams that I know of that don’t run at least one of each right now. This is a balance issue, and over the coming months, I’m sure ANet will work to tone these classes down a bit, and/or bring the other classes up a bit to match.
With regards to Rangers specifically, they’re relatively weak and could probably use improvement in the following areas:
1. Condition removal. Aside from their Healing Spring heal, which removes a single condition on a 30 second CD, Rangers have zero group condition removal.
Their personal condition removal is relatively inconsistent or unreliable. Empathic Bond (laughably a Tier 3 trait) removes a single condition every 10 seconds and puts it on your pet. Suggest making this a Tier 1 or 2 trait.
Signet of Renewal removes a condition every 10 seconds as well. It can also remove all conditions on a 60 second CD, which would be amazing, except a) you have to have a live pet active for it to work, b) your pet has to be in range, and c) it seems to fail completely about 50% of the time even when a and b are true. If this ability were fixed to be more reliable it would be a huge improvement.
2. Group Utility. Rangers just don’t have much. Warhorn 5 is an great group buff, and Healing Spring is a nice group heal, but outside of that, the vast majority of Ranger abilities are selfish in nature. Don’t have specific suggestions on how to improve this, but I hope the devs will give it consideration.
3. Control. Again, Rangers don’t have much. They have 1 knockback on Longbow, which is awful for tPvP. The majority of their cc comes from their pets, which are unfortunately very unreliable.
The fact that pets’ abilities cause them to be rooted while they cast, and that they have a long cast time, and that F2 abilities don’t cast if the pet is already casting a different ability makes Rangers’ cc exceedingly unreliable. Recommend removing the self-root on pet casting, possibly a slight reduction in F2 cast times, and making F2 abilities override any other abilities being cast by the pet when used.
4. Pet AI. It’s pretty bad. When a huge chunk of a class’ damage is attached to an NPC, that NPC needs to be able to reliably stay on a moving target, unless it’s being CCed. Right now, pets will occasionaly just not attack, or sit completely still, or run just inches behind a moving opponent without ever connecting.
Currently, a pet focused build is completely unviable for PvP because of poor Pet AI. AI needs improvement, and again, pet abilities need not to root the pet when cast.
5. Other Issues. This is kind of a personal nitpick, but Ranger Greatsword is my favorite weapon in the game. Unfortunately, its damage was nerfed so hard that it’s outdamaged by Shortbow’s autoattack (not even including bleeds), and Shortbow is a 1200 range weapon. Suggest buffing Greatsword damage some to compensate for the fact that it’s a melee weapon. Right now there’s no reason to use it outside of cool factor.
Sounds like a lot, but it’s really not as bad as it sounds. Ranger needs a bit more group utility, cc removal, and reliability from their pets. If these issues are addressed, they’ll be on par with the better classes in tPvP.
