Guild Wars 2

My ranger is a fully ascended out celestial ranger (I liked the sound of making a celestial ranger.)

I also have leveled numerous classes to 80 and have understood what needed to be learned from their particular move sets/traits to know what’s going on while facing them.

Warriors are the kings of stats (and PvE)
Guardians are the kings of standing still.
Thieves are the best at perma stealth, perma evading, and insisting you are a bad player (at least in the forums.)
Engineeers are definitely the most intricate/engaging profession to play as, with and against.
Mesmers are the kings of group utility on and off the battlefield.
Elementalists are rocking the same stanky shoes as us but with the upcoming patch they can be psuedohealers (odd move imo). But they can rock staff and static field so they rock in WvW.
Necromancers are just strong nowadays with MM, Deathshroud Power Necros and oldschool epidemic spread.

So why do I main a ranger?

It is certainly not because of the pet. The trait lines could use some revisions and a lot of our utilities are just centered on our pet. So it has to be the 1500 range right?

Not. At. All.

Rangers are a soloist’s dream! All of their weapon sets/stats/traits are 100% viable and each move is perfect for a certain situation. Amongst the chaos that this class is, there is a reason a spec speculating hedonist like me can really dig into this class.

Longbow? – The perfect WvW long arm
Shortbow? – The skirmisher’s swiss army knife
Axe? – The attrition weapon
Sword? – The ninja stick
Dagger? – Might be the best skirmisher’s/condition offhand ever.
Torch? – For condition stacking/speccing heavily into condi. Fire fields.
War horn – Favorite way to down/defeat someone is with some stealth tracking birds. Blast finisher.
Greatsword? – Yolo Maul builds. Has both Block and Swoop.

Marksmanship – Want to improve bow range/pierce? Stack Might? Or just have more passive stats but with a usable utility? This the traitline.

Skirmishing – Bleed on crit! Traps do dmg that can crit! Trapper’s expertise can turn that 1 second frost duration into 2 seconds of frost on the tic. 3 If you spec condition duration and it even pulses five times!

Wilderness Survival – Take this tree and worry less about conditions/direct damage. It also helps your condition damage. More rolls, More protection.

Nature magic – Permanent regen/swiftness, spirits (if that’s your think), never having to worry about poison (by dodging)

Beast mastery – Rangers make the most out of healing power more then any other class. With a 1.0 healing ratio (at the least) with their healing skills it suppliments your strong active healing with decent passive healing and a pet that never usually dies.

TL:DR

Rangers are not average. This class has everything. Push this class to it’s limits and you will not be disappointed!

P.S. Rangers ARE Aquaman.

MH Axe is NOT an attrition weapon. It’s just… awful.

Ranger utility falls apart sadly in larger group settings.
In smaller groups, the ranger brings fewer group utilities (cleanses, fields, finishers)
The ranger is a fine roamer.

One thing that will really help the ranger is faster changing of builds. This is because the build that covers say a larger fight in a keep is quite different than a roaming build.

Kain Francois.4328:

MH Axe is NOT an attrition weapon. It’s just… awful.

Awful against 1 target, 1v2 it gets better than sword imo, and vs 3+ is it an ok weapon.

Most of us know that rangers are really good duelists/soloers, but a big part of the game rely in team/group gameplay and that is where rangers start to lose its shine.

Bombsaway.7198:

Ranger utility falls apart sadly in larger group settings.
In smaller groups, the ranger brings fewer group utilities (cleanses, fields, finishers)
The ranger is a fine roamer.

One thing that will really help the ranger is faster changing of builds. This is because the build that covers say a larger fight in a keep is quite different than a roaming build.

Their support tree is pretty decent in what it provides and they also stack. Provided spirits require you to be a midliner so that everyone can receive their buffs but I’ve learned to play my ranger at any range so it isn’t a problem.

On the subject of fields I find myself calling my water fields to great effect while in zerging/havoc teams. I can also easily provide fire fields, ice fields and (soon) poison fields. Personally I really like the blast finishers on both water and ice since I use sword/warhorn usually on my offset which I can use to full effect.

In what they do I feel they can contribute a great deal still but in a different way. True they may only have one blast finisher but they offer great area denial with barrage/muddy terrain/traps/pet AoE’s.

Since the change that let’s the pet’s condition duration scale with you I’ve set up a 50% extra condition duration build that absolutely cripples and stifles enemy movements on my commander’s command. While other classes CC gets countered by stability we provide a great deal of immobilize/cripple/chill that is constantly applied.

Rangers are average in almost every aspect of the game! And this is what makes us superior!
Being the jack-of-all-trades makes us strong in solo and small group play but less required in large groups, as there always will be someone who surpasses us in a single aspect of the game.
Whatever…if you know what you do and what the class is capable of you can do pretty much everything in this game.

I’ve got 1700 hours on my ranger since launch. Time spent: 80% wvw, 10% pvp, 10% pve. Sure it’s viable across all game modes but like many people posted before, other classes can do it better.
I’ve always roamed on my ranger because it took much effort to be successful. Even after all the nerfs I adapted like many others and continued to play ranger. But you know sometimes you get fights in wvw where no matter how close to perfect you play, you just can’t kill that other competent player on another class. The fight highlights how kitten the ranger is but you brush it off and keep doing your best. But after many of those fights and Anet not doing anything to improve the ranger, things stop becoming enjoyable. It gets frustrating to play as one because hey I got all these evades and they can’t kill me that easy, but I can’t friggin kill them either! Oh look a longbow, cool it’s got stealth! Rangers are kitten period.
So what I did was play two of my lesser used lvl 80’s- thief and mesmer and boy it made me think “why the hell did I ever waste my time on the ranger post-nerfs?”
My thief is a better roamer and my mesmer is even better because it can roam and zerg without changing traits or set-up! Game is fun again but I feel bad whenever I run into a ranger in wvw because I know that there’s no way they can beat a decent mesmer, there’s just no way. It’s like fighting a newborn =\
Rangers used to be awesome. Used to be.

Milk it’s sad to see another ranger lose heart after rolling another class. This may seem obvious but the another reason I run my ranger are the ranged options this class provides. Knocking back an opponent off a ledge from 1200 range is truly rewarding and the pushback is even stronger from up close to make it easier. Clever use of utilities like using muddy terrain to immobilize thr ele that JUST used ride the lightning, stepping two steps to the right and shooting him/her off the ledge is freaking fantastic.

I like the instant satisfaction this class gives with smart play. Because I feel this is one of the classes that has an answer to everything. Because I believe smart play is this class’s biggest strength.

Stealthing just before you become the focus of attacks. Using rapid fire to track that stealth thief and using barrage to counter that hidey house/ slow choke.

Every move that a ranger can be amazing if used correctly. It’s just a matter of being prepared/knowing the timing.

I don’t really care about the numbers I put out or whether other classes can do what I can do better. This class has a bit of everything so that’s how I play my ranger. Stealth? Use the longbow/Siamoth. Mobility? I use the sword for the mobility towards and away from the enemy.

This class is great for sustained damage, the trick is to be able to apply the damage against the enemy’s movements. Whether near or far the ranger is capable of at least contributing to the fight in some way.

Warrior – Cleave direct DPS
Ranger – Single-target condition damage.
Necro – AoE condition damage.
Ele – Booning.
Guardian – Damage reduction, AoE healing.
Thief – Burst direct damage.
Engineer – AoE direct damage, self-healing, 1500 range direct damage.
Mesmer – Crit-based trait activation and critical damage, damage absorption.

That’s pretty much the specialisations in each class. Each of them can also do other roles but will be worse than another class in that role. For instance, power necros cannot cleave, condition damage guardians are just really, really bad, and one does not simply make a healing thief.

The ranger has rather good single target dps. People mistaken burst damage for dps, and they also mistaken giant numbers (even though there’s a channel) for dps. This makes them faceroll pve open world like no other. Ok, sure, open world is trivial and requires little skill, but considering this class gets bashed because it doesn’t perform in the activity that requires just as little skill (wvw zerging), I don’t really see a problem. And hey, the pet can tank champions effortlessly! Rangers are underrated for their ability to provide consistent damage pressure because it isn’t cool enough with the giant numbers so you can brag about.

In actually difficult content such as dungeons, fractals, and roaming, rangers are strong. So I don’t really think anyone wasted their time rolling a ranger.

The problem I generally have are the trait spreads and flexibility and a reliance on the pet that makes scaling a pain. (Why must I spend 30 points for signets to work; why is everything stacked up there?). This causes a general lack of build diversity, something guardians complain a lot about too. That class certainly has builds that work really well of course, but venturing out suddenly makes it a ton harder.

I think the pet mechanic needs to be looked at. Having many utilities that rely on killing your pet or praying for the ai to save you is just not anyways to go.

I don’t main a ranger; I rolled one specifically to see what the complaints are about. Some of the complaints are valid, and this class is far from perfect— surely ignoring the problems will not lead to any changes, though the class is far more functional than a lot of people may think.