Guild Wars 2

There seem to be a growing consensus that If your not this class or that class you have not place in wvw. That is just non sense. Some say soloing supply camps doesnt help that is bull. You cant do anything as a server without supplies. Even 1 vs 1 builds contribute. If you kill one defender or envader who was going to join thier zerg that helps. Solo roamer are also scouts they relay heading and count of an enemy zerg.

As far a ranger as a class spirits provide great support for thier allies. while few if any ranger use them. Before you say warrior banner are better they are not the are different. While for the most part they provide stat bonuses which you can get via food and the like. Ranger provide different buff like 10% damage or protection which only complements a warriors banner.

The real issue is the play style of the ranger as a community. While there are those who are very sucessful with thier ranger most are not. One reason is a large majority are trying to burst like thieves. Rangers have very good sustained damage. Our damge is what it is.

The control role is pretty much defined but But we need to make more improvements here.

The Support role is where I think a ranger can really shine but there is really no glory in it.

The first problem is the image of the ranger. Those of you who only see rangers only as an archer are not helping matters. The ranger class mechanism is not the bow. Learn to use all the weopan at our disposal. We all have our favorite weapons but what I’m asking is you learn them all then decide which you like the best (this includes pets).

Second: our class mechanism spirits and pets. There are those of you who wish to get rid of our pets. It is part of the class. I hated builds in GW1 you were forced to give up two slots(Charm animal so your pet would accompany you and a heal/res skill for your pet) to have a pet. This isnt the case anymore your pet is with you know matter what. Not knowing how to use spirits and pets properly is like a thief not knowing how to steal stealth or backstab.

Dont give me that crap about spirits are to weak. Learn to work with it when I started my thief I was like what the hell am i going to do with a 1second stealth. I worked with it and I learned ( mind you I still suck with my thief). I played gw1 spirits there were like tissue paper. The last update increase thier hp by 25% you can trait them and double their health.

The ranger class is a discipline unlike the other profession. I once believed that Elementalist where the most complicated class. This is not true. The ranger class is.

I’m asking those of you who main a ranger like I do. To continues to learn your craft to keep grow in skill and help the ranger community as a whole. To stop with all of the negativity.

Nothing is wrong with asking for help but there is a diffence between:

1. I am running x dungeon and x mob keeps chasing my pet and i have tried stowing him. what else can I try

Vs

2. I am running x Dungeon and my pet is totally useless, My pet keep aggroing x mob anet suck what the hell is wrong with them not make pet perma stow.

Honestly I get tired of hearing it and Im sure im not the only one.
One of the complaint i hear the most is pets can hit a moving target sure they can.
They just have to be moving faster that the target. You can spec in two 30% move increase for your pet. crippling your target also helps. Its one of the reasons I love 1h so much. I aslo use a jaguar (it 100% crit in stealth and its hard to evade what you cant see) and a drake hound (if your laying on you back you cant run).

for those of you who say pets cant tank anything. I find my pet do fine against anything that doesnt one shot a player. My pet can stay alive vs the troll in ac and the Lt the key is to interupt there big attack. knowing which of your skill can interrupt is key to keeping your self alive and your pet. Interrupt were a keep part of a rangers role in GW 1 I dont see why it cant be in GW2.

Sorry, but is there a tl;dr version? i have 5 minutes before I get off work.

i want a hammer for my ranger :|

If spirits were viable, most dungeon-running rangers would instantly swap to a spirit build or at least use spirits.

I tried out spirits plenty enough. Most of the time they died to AoE or trash, even when placed strategically. If their buffs were powerful enough to warrant their fragility, then I would be alright with it. But they’re not.

Finally a thread on the ranger-forums that is not all about crying, but even goes into the opposite direction!

I also want to “raise” my voice and shout out loud that rangers are far away from being “crap” or an underpowered profession. Ofc there are issues with some traits, utilities and skills, they have to be fixed, but hey, other professions have these as well.

In spvp and wvw i am using a full-melee-ranger, with GS and sword+dagger. He does great! Ok, while attacking some castles or defending them, i might switch to long bow, but again, every other profession should use more then 1 or 2 weaponsets to grow to its full potential. Especially in small scale situations or 1v1 “my” rangerbuild excels -because i made it like that.

In dungeons i go with a sb most times instead of the GS. Not because GS is bad, but because u need in general one ranged weapon for these, or lets say, its much easyer in dungeons (explo) to go ranged then all-time-melee, especially with the SB. Though the more experience i get, the better i get in going full melee on most bosses…

What bothers me most at these boards are those players that want the ranger to take a different role then anet has given them. Most here seem to read ranger as archer, and expect burst-like dmg. Get over it. Thank the devs ranger is not only good on bows -though our SB is an awesome weapon in pvp and pve, it requires the least skill to master of all our weapons and is very “beginner”-friendly, the ranger is also good on other weapons. And second, rangers are not for people that want to see biggest numbers. Rangers have a lot of defensive potential. Most ppl seem to ignore that.

Pets are also great. Ofc there r some bugs, some things which could work better. But the concept, the idea and their mechanics r good. One has “just” to recognize that they r no invulnerable npcs that are doing the dirty work for you. Like “i send my pet on u, and bamm, u r dead. Ha, i have so much skill…”. Get over that. U need to control them. U need to know when to call em back out of a fight -especially in dungeons or wvw. U have to watch them, what they do. And u have to use them right. Their utility is much more important then their dmg. From that perspective, they are not that easy to use, but that is just good. Rangers in gw2 are not another petclass for the easymoders.

To be honest, there seems to be a lack of guidance in the Ranger forum compared to many others I have looked into. I shelved my Ranger for a while because I was just fumbling with picking stuff that seemed more or less okay, but lacked synergy.

The closest I’ve seen here have been arguments about shortbow vs. longbow, and comments about pets (which, I feel, led me down a less than optimal path anyway).

I found some build suggestions on another site and mine actually was not far off from a decent build; with different pets (hello devourer!) and more emphasis on traps I am suddenly more effective. (Though that information wasn’t terribly complete either, in terms of gear/stats.)

Granted, I mostly am interested in PVE. But it seems to me like most things learned in PVE are applicable to WVW, and someone bad at PVE is generally not going to be good at WVW either.

Meh…

I still think all this mess is because of innocent stereotyping. The GW2 ranger is a departure from a class that has a long history in mmo’s. Whereas the prototypical ranger is almost without fail “all about a bow,” GW2’s ranger is not. It is a beastmaster that is decent with a bow.

ANet could have saved tons of grief over this had they simply explained this out thoroughly before the game launched. They aren’t like GW1 ranger, which a lot assumed it would be regardless of what they actually are. And they aren’t masters with a bow, despite them sold as such.

No where did it say before launch that a ranger’s damage would be nerfed to make up for their pet’s damage. Nor did it say that pets were a permanent fixture. These were things we learned in-game.

Besides Guardians and Engi’s(since they are new they really have no precedent), every other class behaves the way anyone would expect them to in an mmo. Wars clobber, Ele’s storm, and thieves burst, etc. It is not unreasonable for peeps to expect a class called “ranger” to be a bow/archer class…it’s one of the oldest mmo professions in the genre.

I would bet anyone that if they had called this class “Beastmaster” instead of ranger, there would be almost zero “dps” complaints about them in the ranger forums. Err..beastmaster forums.

Well, in Ultima Online or Shadowbane there were ranger classes, but none of those were bow-exculsive. Problem is that “most other mmos” r derived from a certain comic-style-mmo, and thank god that gw2 is (still) different

I agree, I built my ranger for WvW to be solo capper/scout and it works great wherever i go with my ranger. Just be active on the chat and coordinate movement with other players or the zerg leader. people tend to run and protect the castle being zerged which gives room + sufficient time for you to take out a supply post. Even if the zerg fails to take the castle, you crippled them for a few seconds, or even minutes. It’s all about playing a good role and teamwork. Not everyone is a tanky fighter, super bomb, or sneaky assassin. All that aside, i do think rangers need some work on 1v1 fights. I usually run away when spotted.

Cake Monster.7496:

I agree, I built my ranger for WvW to be solo capper/scout and it works great wherever i go with my ranger. Just be active on the chat and coordinate movement with other players or the zerg leader. people tend to run and protect the castle being zerged which gives room + sufficient time for you to take out a supply post. Even if the zerg fails to take the castle, you crippled them for a few seconds, or even minutes. It’s all about playing a good role and teamwork. Not everyone is a tanky fighter, super bomb, or sneaky assassin. All that aside, i do think rangers need some work on 1v1 fights. I usually run away when spotted.

Rangers can roam, check Xsorsus videos or any number of proper rangers. Also, watch out: some youtube ranger videos are just terrible. It’s a matter of getting the right build, engaging battales you can win, and scouting for the guild.

“My” ranger-build (pure melee) is especially made for 1v1, and very sucessful there. Be it spvp or wvw -on the other hand he does close to none aoe-dmg.. Imo rangers r one of the strongest 1v1-professions, though u might have trouble catching every enemy that runs away, other professions do that job better. It all depends on your profession-build. They can be so different, depending on what u build it for and how u feel comfortable with it. E.g. a ranger putting more then 10 points into skirmishing traitline cant expect to be good in 1v1 for most builds. Everything, skills, weapons, traits, choice of pets, stats on gear is important ofc, and shapes the build into what direction to take. Ranger has a bigger and better set of tools to counter and deal with any build/profession out there then most classes, especially lets say warriors.

Haudruff.7804:

“My” ranger-build (pure melee) is especially made for 1v1, and very sucessful there. Be it spvp or wvw. Imo rangers r one of the strongest 1v1-professions, though u might have trouble catching every enemy that runs away, other professions do that job better. It all depends on your profession-build. They can be so different, depending on what u build it for and how u feel comfortable with it. E.g. a ranger putting more then 10 points into skirmishing traitline cant expect to be good in 1v1 for most builds. Everything, skills, weapons, traits, choice of pets, stats on gear is important ofc, and shapes the build into what direction to take. Ranger has a bigger and better set of tools to counter and deal with any build/profession out there then most classes, especially lets say warriors.

Is there any way you can squeeze in more cripple to prevent players from escaping? A bigger change would be to use GS “swoop”. Thoughts?

Not ingame atm, so just “out of my head”. What “my” build can do to get escaping players apart from GS-swoop is cripple with GS4, then change to sword+dagger (if enemy is close enough he gets frozen by sigil of hydromancy), use dagger5 (another cripple with 900 range me thinks) and hope that signet of hunt and/or elite (swiftness) is up and enough. But a very fast ele or thief may still escape, its not perfect. Anyhow, imo not every profession should be able to get others by default, on the other hand some of those “runners” r maybe a bit over the top. Anyhow, i dont care -let them run away, killshot is not that important then holding a point in spvp or a camp in wvw.

You gave me an idea

I completely agree, rangers can be quite great at a good number of roles. I myself have fallen in love with a spirit support/BM tank hybrid. it is a beast to take down and in WvW most foes make the mistake of targeting me first thinking that because I am ranger I will go down quickly and quietly.

D/D burst thieves are the most entertaining to face. I’ve yet to come across one that didn’t just stand there dumb struck after blowing their entire burst chain to find me still standing at half health (yes, I realize there are a bunch of nub thieves, good thief would eat my face etc., I’d figure I’d save you the typical rebuttal argument. There will always be some better player then me, or a build that can counter me)

I am still a huge advocate of pets, a ranger is infinately better once they master control of their pets and start combo’ing skills to work with them rather then alongside them. Not a fire and forget weapon.

And I agree with the sentiment on skill cap. The skill cap for a ranger is deceptively high. It feels pretty pew pew at beginning levels when that will cut it fine, but higher levels, you want to shine, you must shine with the pet.

Absolutely loving the ranger in WvW at the moment. even though I am still lvl 55 I managed to fight 2v1 against a mesmer and an engineer full 80’s and downed one then got killed after a 2 minute fight.

I zerg combat I like to hang round the sides and pick my targets. I try not to send the pet in as it will automatically die so I have it handy to swap to get 2 secs of quickness every 15 seconds. I’ve actually got a decent amount of badges considering the level and damage potential is still very low.

I firmly believe that Rangers do not suck at all. I use both bows and melee. Maybe thats whats wrong with other rangers. All focused on damage and no survival only to be 3 hit by everyone then cry.

when short bow isn’t the flavor of the month/year/whatever anymore, you’ll see ranger success climb.
i sat and took short bow arrows to the face a solid 20 seconds and took 2k damage. for some reason 90% of SB rangers don’t move at all when they use it. easy pickings for someone like me who prefers to melee.
axes: underused
torch: holy kitten underused. have you seen the burn damage on bonfire?
axe offhand: why aren’t glass rangers using this? path of scars hits hard even for a cleric’s build like me.

get away from the cookie cutter. no more sb and axe/horn. that isn’t playing your class that’s playing someone’s else’s build on the game’s class.

Pets are pretty bad in WvW. I don’t even use devourers anymore. I stick with red moa and jungle stalker. Waiting 60 seconds before you can fire off another 2 second quickness isn’t worth it so I don’t send my pets out and risk disintegration unless it’s against a very small group where everything has been commited.

The spirits are pretty bad. I liked the spirits in GW1 more. You could make projectiles fly faster or do more damage. I think they also had a higher effective radius. The spirits in GW2 die to 1 or 2 aoe. Having them run with you will get them killed. The 10% damage one is inconsistent since it has a % chance to proc so you can’t force it to proc on a killshot. In will more likely proc in the middle of a projectile spam ability for little effect. It might increase your overall effective damage by 1%. It affects up 5 people I believe so total effective damage output is probably increased by 5% of your own damage. That is a small boon for how much a liability that spirit is. The sun spirit on the other hand always procs for high damage if you run a condition build independant of what skill is used. The sun spirit is the best of the four. The protection spirit is a liability that most likely won’t reach your melee. It might mitigate the second or third hit from a thief or aoe but the spirit itself is just as likely to get hit by the thief or aoe them knowing it has a 60 second cooldown and little hp. The swiftness spirit might make sense if instead it crippled your opponent on proc. It probably wouldn’t be in range of your melee to whom it would be more useful for chasing high mobility classes. The active abilities of the spirits are bad. They should have a cast range.

To make one small comparison between spirits and banners. Anyone can pick up a warrior banner and hit 3 for group swiftness and 4 for extra mobility to get to where they need to go and drop it whenever they want and other players can’t kill it. It order to get swiftness from the swiftness spirit you first have to be in range of it, then you have to hit something until it procs. If your group moves it will we left behind unless you have the trait that makes spirits follow you. If someone sees spirits following you they will aoe you until all your spirits die.

You would think spirits(of the land if you will) would be like altars or idols. Their purpose should be to protect the land for which they have an active effect by granting boons(defined more generally than a boon in GW2. The spirits active effect on the ally) to the allies on that land. Sun spirit makes sense. Protection spirit would make sense if it gave priority to those wielding melee weapons. The damage spirit is impotent. The swiftness spirit should grant cripple on proc instead to keep the fight on said sanctified land and to indirectly protect the spirits themselves. If not then they should give priority to those wielding melee weapons. Where would you use a swiftness spirit besides kiting a boss? In an open field it dies. It a keep or tower it is pointless. Tucked away at a supply camp it might grant an advantage if it gave priority to those wielding melee weapons. Cripple spirit might slow the game down and make it less fun. But the swiftness spirit doesn’t really speed it up and make it more fun.

I would conclude that spirits are only useful for kiting stuff that doesn’t have ranged aoe. All this aside I have a lazy ranger build that works great so I don’t have much problem with the ranger. If the spirits suck don’t use them. If the pet sucks use a buff pet or a devourer. If shouts suck don’t use them.

it’s not nonsense OP. youre either new to the game, you havent tried other profs, or youre simply blind to the problem.

ive sunk about 100g into my ranger, getting just about every piece of exo armor. ive been playing my ranger since BWE1. i play paids on my bunker ranger and do well there.

but when i log onto another character in WvW, it’s like im playing a whole other game. every prof is on a whole other level in WvW compared to the ranger.

it also depends what your definition of “contribution” is. to me, being able to roll with a group of 5 people and crush a small zerg of 20-25 players is contributing to WvW. soloing camps, giving a boon here or there, or immobilizing people isnt really “contributing”. my guardian alone can dive into a zerg, down 4-5 players in one sequence, and get out safely. warriors can do the same. eles, necros and mesmers can do it from 1200.

the ranger does not have a place in my definition of contribution. hes a good duelist, and just below average in every other area. top ranger players in WvW will tell you the same, and im getting pretty sick and tired of the blind fanboyism. dont you want your prof to get better? just advocate for it.

Haudruff.7804:

work for you. Like “i send my pet on u, and bamm, u r dead. Ha, i have so much skill…”. Get over that. U need to control them. U need to know when to call em back out of a fight -especially in dungeons or wvw.

Simplifying the issues people have with pets by saying people want them to auto kill everything without taking any damage themselves is just insulting to the constructive criticism people have been giving about pets. How long has the black widow spider been bugged so that it has less health than every other spider including the otherwise identical jungle spider?

We are how many months after the launch of FotM and pets STILL don’t have agony resistance. Can there be any louder message from the devs that ranger class balance in dungeons and pet survivability and viability is as low an issue as it can be, if not a non issue for them at all? They aren’t even trying.

Now consider that we’ve had the displeasure to experience the AR issue since the beginning so we can accurately gage how poorly they are handling it. How does that reflect on their attitude to general pet survivability, where most rangers are running ranged pets to avoid long cooldowns from defeated pets (lets be serious, when you press F3, most of the time your pet will actually move 50% slower and does not immediately return to you, it’s our fault that the pet commands are unresponsive apparently). If you can see from AR how little attention they pay attention to pet survivability, what does that say about their attention to pets in every other part of the game?

Not all pets have utility purposes. Some pets are DPS in design. More challenging dungeons don’t support DPS pets due to their terrible AI, poor response times to commands and extreme fragility.

I love the ranger and I have great success with it, but I’m not going to pretend like there aren’t broken (in the “needs to be fixed so it works properly” way, not the “omg so overpowered” way) mechanics, one of them being the pet. It’s useful, and you can get some great use out of it, but the effective pet list is very shallow, the combo potential is very limited (this guy is supposed to be your companion and partner, in sync with you in combat, most pets don’t offer any combo potential at all, aside from maybe a leap skill for a class that has only one combo field outside of a trap build). My guardian has combo fields and finishers on the same weapon, within a rotation. No ranger weapon set has a combo field (aside from the torch) and most weapon/pet combinations won’t have a combo field and finisher. That’s such a disappointing design failure.

When I use virtues, clones, adrenaline, attunement swapping or tool belt skills, they always feel like they work right. When I play classes with those mechanics, I’m trying to figure out how best to use those skills and the options they give me to edge out my performance that little bit more every fight. When I play my ranger, instead of focusing on all the cool things the pet gives me, all the ways to combo, to control, to edge out that bit more DPS on my enemy, I’m focused on keeping my pet alive so I can F4 15 seconds later and get my quickness. The F2 skill, a little bit of passive DPS, maybe a knockdown or slight control (who knows, depends on the pet) and quickness. That’s what pets amount to. I like to bring spiders for their immobilise and devourers for constant poison. Their range helps them stay alive. I used to bring wolves and moas for control and a little bit of support, but anything with melee hate (at least 50% of dungeons) will pummel them into a permanent cowering state, never mind agony which will kill even ranged pets.

Spirits are garbage. They offer weak boons (compare them to the boon builds of most other classes), they have hidden internal cooldowns, they require a full 30 point investment before most people would seriously consider taking them (you are rarely going to spend 60 seconds in an area that would benefit from their effect, most fights your party won’t even be in their area of effect) and they die to almost every AoE or even a stray arrow. A single AoE skill can completely negate 30 point trait investments and three (or four) of my utility skills for up to 60 seconds. That’s hilarious.

The build diversity of the class is below average and the viability and contribution of a support ranger is well below par. Their class mechanic is dependant on a fragile AI companion and the reward it offers for skill and build investment is very little compared to cost it has to the class. Rangers can be effective and many builds can hold their own, but I don’t at all agree that the sentiment in this sub forum is off the mark when it comes to the class flaws.

I agree with OP. I play ranger, have fun and success, no matter what anyone else has experienced. I have tried many builds, every weapon, nearly every utility and pet, I am not a master but I know the class a bit. I love the ranger. I tried to make alts of other professions, play them in sPvP/WvW but I just don’t find their playstyles as fun as the ranger (either that or I’m to lazy to level lol). The class is good to me regardless of any issues it has, point blank, and I’m not the only one. I can gladly give tips and continue to learn what I can about the class.

@awesomesauce.5980

Yes, i guess we all know there r bugs. Yes, we all know about anets “handling” in correcting issues where we might think they could be solved fast and are easy to see. Won’t argue here, i holeheartly agree with u.
And yes, i would love to see some pet-skills thought over. Some r useless.
And i would love to have more options for petcontrol then just active/passive and attack/retreat/switch.
BUT: in generell, the mechanics r good. This pet here is not like the wow-hunters-pet. This “pet-class” here is not easymode. This pet here is not over the top, and shall never be. It dies were a player dies, it can’t stand in AOEs where no player would survive a second. It doesn’t deal a huge amount of dmg, so it could do all the dirty work for u. Thats why i like.
And if one learns and trains more and more, gets more skilled in using their pets, selecting them, then they r a very valueable companion, a lifesaver or enemykiller. But i guess u know that
Same goes for weaponpowers: i love the ranger weaponskills. No, i dont use SB much, its not fun for ME (standing/kiting and pew pew is not my thing). I love the versality the weaponskills offer compared to lets say warrior or thief. Ofc this depends on preference and style. (The reason why i choose ranger was because of their sword, dagger and GS-skills. And its awesome. I love the synergies they offer with the rangerprofession and traits. And no, they r not offensive synergies for most.)
For spirits: its the same with them what goes for pets: why should they survive AOEs where any player would die in? That would be to easy, to wow-ish (lol). I agree, one may look into their buff-cooldowns, their mobility-trait should be placed not at the end, but maybe at 20 points. It would be great if one could have more control over their spirits, more options how they should move. BUT still: if traited and played right, spirits r not garbage.
What i would love to see for a start: when we dodge (or maybe even evade with weaponpowers), our pets and spirits should also dodge. More options to control both. Even an option to “store” them in combat. But hell, thats another thread…^^

Agadar.4931:

If spirits were viable, most dungeon-running rangers would instantly swap to a spirit build or at least use spirits.

I tried out spirits plenty enough. Most of the time they died to AoE or trash, even when placed strategically. If their buffs were powerful enough to warrant their fragility, then I would be alright with it. But they’re not.

Here’s the problem Spirits are bad when they are not traited for. If you invest into them being able to move they can survive their entire duration because they will move where you move. If you are placing them they aren’t moving around (i.e If you dodge out of AoE they will follow you and there inlys the skill/reward factor).

Personally I love taking them to dungeons. I get bored of going Guardian and the build I use can keep up Regen/Protection constantly.

Elspeth Tiriel.9243:

Here’s the problem Spirits are bad when they are not traited for. If you invest into them being able to move they can survive their entire duration because they will move where you move. If you are placing them they aren’t moving around (i.e If you dodge out of AoE they will follow you and there inlys the skill/reward factor).

Personally I love taking them to dungeons. I get bored of going Guardian and the build I use can keep up Regen/Protection constantly.

sadly i dont want to trait 30 points in one of the worst trees just to use my spirits more effectively, id rather like to see them have their range increased by a HUGE radius, so i can place them in a fight once in a strategical position, then i wouldnt even care if they had even less hp, thats how spirits were in gw1 and they were great.

Chopps.5047:

Haudruff.7804:

“My” ranger-build (pure melee) is especially made for 1v1, and very sucessful there. Be it spvp or wvw. Imo rangers r one of the strongest 1v1-professions, though u might have trouble catching every enemy that runs away, other professions do that job better. It all depends on your profession-build. They can be so different, depending on what u build it for and how u feel comfortable with it. E.g. a ranger putting more then 10 points into skirmishing traitline cant expect to be good in 1v1 for most builds. Everything, skills, weapons, traits, choice of pets, stats on gear is important ofc, and shapes the build into what direction to take. Ranger has a bigger and better set of tools to counter and deal with any build/profession out there then most classes, especially lets say warriors.

Is there any way you can squeeze in more cripple to prevent players from escaping? A bigger change would be to use GS “swoop”. Thoughts?

I was to use a GS, but I just find myself hinder by it, even when wandering. It gives you great movement options but I just don’t get the options I get from a single sword (or even the survivability, the evade on #1 is great but only if you’re hitting something and not on tap like it is on a single sword, the block is just too long of a cooldown for me) and then a swap to a different off hand depending on what I’m doing.

Maybe I should give it another try with the greatsword talent to bring down cooldowns.

Yes I want rangers to get better. But I dont want easy mode. Right now ranger are Gods in the water. More than anything the ranger community needs to open thier minds. We are not playing WoW or any other game.

If you dont see the benifits of spirit buff then I dont know what I can tell you. How much toughness would you need to apply to get a 33% damage reduction. Also if you dont see a use for 33% movement speed increase in combat I guess people have to spell it out for you. 33% can help you kite better. It can also help you you get in range of a fleeing target to get that cripple shot off.

Spirit placement is pretty much always the same. To simplify things I will use yards. Weather I am fighting ranged or melee spirit placement is always 50 yards behind me. The only diffence is in a ranged fight spirits are 100 yard for target with me standing between spirits and target. In a melee battle both me and my target are 50 yards from spirits.

It seem to me that there are Four types of rangers.

Type

1. Creationist= They believe that Anet created rangers in a certain way. Weather they agree or dissagree with that Image they believe rangers can not become anything more without Anets help. Let rename them The Helpless

2. Evolutionist= They believe Ranger can,will or must evolve. Some of this evolution requires both the community and the forces of nature (anet). Regardless of thier feeling of the current state of the ranger they believe it will evolve into something great or viable. Let rename them The Hopeful

3. Dreamers = They believe the ranger is something that its not. Either from a dream they had or another game or even some wiki definition of a ranger. No matter what happens they can not wake from thier dream. Wether this dream is a nightmare of being a useless class and incapable of doing anthing right. Or a fantasy of the ranger soloing some big bad beasty with a dreamer bow to boot. Let rename them The Unrealistic

4. Acheivers = Regardless of the state of the class they will out proform the average ranger. They will not stop till they overcome every obstical. They will learn to master every weapon, pet,skill and role. Lets rename them the power rangers.

Ask yourself where do you fall. The more I play the more I understand. I have come to understand that for most people if they are not instantly good with a class they stop playing or start complaining. Some of you have been playing rangers since bwe1.

You speak as though you are an expert on the class. To me thats like take karate for 6 months and you get mad becuase you cant do a flying spinning punch of doom. First off there is not flying spinning punch of doom.

Second you havent master the flying (support) or spinning (control) or punching (damage). Some of you cant see the benifit of swiftness or protection in a genral sense but your going to ask me if I’m new.

on another not.
I have never had a problem getting into a group because im a ranger. If you feel ranger are useless in WvW please start a thread : Rangers dont belong in WvW or Dungeon group. and just sign your character name. Ill be sure not to add you in any of my group or res you in WvW.

think of rangers as the Samurai of Guild Wars 2. thinking like that every time i found a zerg made the job oh so much easier.