Guild Wars 2

Before we get started, I do not mean to make anyone feel bad, I do not mean to insult any classes. This is my first post on the forum, and I have only played about 3 hours every day for a week, so yes, I am unexperienced.

No matter what class I rolled, Guardian, Necromancer, Engineer, Mesmer, or Warrior, I felt all did their jobs better then the ranger. I lost the Warrior due to me not liking it compared to the Guardian. But I tried the Ranger, which was my favorite class in GW1.

It seems the emphasis on Rangers is being in groups, because my level 15 Mesmer would destroy single rangers in WvW, almost all the time. But when they defended keeps they often caused a problem due to their range.

The ranger seemed to only deal a reasonable amount of damage when I either used the fifth skill of the Warhorn, boosting damage, or when I used a sword. That isn’t necessarily bad, but with medium armor and a cooldown, it isn’t something to rely on indefinitely.

But I get the longbow and it just feels so weak.

I would love tips, confirmation that this class is either weak or decent and I’m just doing it wrong, and I know I am bad at ranger. I have not found my strong suit for it quite yet.

I personally prefer having a devourer for an AoE to shoot through, and ability to move away from targets while being a ranged dps. I like the swords output, and the Warhorns Hawk Ability, but often get hurt too much due to weak armor. Any ideas what type of playstyle I should attempt?

Thanks ahead of time for answering.

Yes, the class is on the weaker side of things. No, we’re not as useless as many will claim. You can be a boon to you team playing a ranger. Just realize that many will contribute more than we do due to issues inherent with the class. Issues that will hopefully be addressed by ANet before too long.

There are many styles of build you could strive for, but I’d personally avoid any range-only builds. Go for ranged/melee or pure melee. Also don’t forget about your pet and consider putting points in Beastmastery to not only boost your pets survivability (and open up more options for pet choice due to the increased survivability) but also its damage output.

from my experience.. go full healing.. if you can keep alive.. almost to the point excess then thats better than dying and the ranger does this well as we have a pet to chop away without defensively scaled stats..

SynfulChaot.3169:

Yes, the class is on the weaker side of things. No, we’re not as useless as many will claim. You can be a boon to you team playing a ranger. Just realize that many will contribute more than we do due to issues inherent with the class. Issues that will hopefully be addressed by ANet before too long.

There are many styles of build you could strive for, but I’d personally avoid any range-only builds. Go for ranged/melee or pure melee. Also don’t forget about your pet and consider putting points in Beastmastery to not only boost your pets survivability (and open up more options for pet choice due to the increased survivability) but also its damage output.

do it for the healing power if anything..

Everything you did that was above average…. Got Nerfed.
It says so right in the all the patch notes.
Anyone who disagrees, sucks at reading basically.

/Mystery solved.

…Shoulda mained Guardian like I did. Anyone who played in Beta saw this coming.

ilr.9675:

Everything you did that was above average…. Got Nerfed.
It says so right in the all the patch notes.
Anyone who disagrees, sucks at reading basically.

/Mystery solved.

…Shoulda mained Guardian like I did. Anyone who played in Beta saw this coming.

Play a class for the playstyle it provides, not for the pure power. I prefer my ranger to my other classes due to how it plays and the more dynamic combat. My guardian (my main alt, btw) is fun but doesn’t bring as much damage to the table nor is she as dynamic in combat as she’s nearly pure support.

And everything we did above average got nerfed? Not quite. We only got a nerf to our SB range, for no other reason than to force LB use. Bad choice on their part. We also got a nerf to our pet damage output, which wouldn’t have irritated so many if they had siphoned that damage elsewhere in any way. Which they did not. Neither of these things we did above average to begin with.

Lets look at what rangers truly do above average. Survive. We survive. We have near unparalleled endurance, evasion, and the ability to avoid damage. It’s part of why there are so many glass cannon rangers. Because due to our survivability we can afford to run them without dying instantaneously like some classes.

How do you surive so easily with a ranger? I noticed one handed fighting with a sword I often rolled back and forth out of enemy strikes. But that can only work until there is a cooldown, right?

Wing Leigh.3795:

How do you surive so easily with a ranger? I noticed one handed fighting with a sword I often rolled back and forth out of enemy strikes. But that can only work until there is a cooldown, right?

There is also the built in evades and block of the GS, the evade of SB #3, and the knockback of LB #4. Those are just the attacks. We also have a constant +50% endurance regen boost with only 5 points in WS which allows us to dodge more. With 10 in WS we can make our heals apply vigor, which is a +100% boost to endurance regen. Combine that trait with healing spring and we heal, and apply regen and vigor to all allies in its radius.

It’s all about synergizing the skills and traits we have and superior positioning. We don’t survive by just standing there. Well … most of us don’t. Some builds can, but I’m less familiar with the PvP bunker builds. We mostly survive by avoiding the big hits.

It sounds like you’re a lowbie and haven’t gotten an accurate impression of the class yet. The problem is that the leveling process doesn’t give an accurate impression of a class’s strength since everything is balanced around it at level 80. Look at warriors versus engineers, for example:

Warriors had a trait called Deep Strikes which gave them a flat +40 precision for each equipped signet; that was outrageously OP at level 20 because +200 precision (for 5 signets) was worth like 80% crit chance. At level 80, it’s worth about 9% crit chance. A lot of warriors who used this trait while leveling thus got the impression that signet warriors were outrageously OP (which they kinda were at level 20) and were still running 5 signets at level 80. You’ll still see a bunch of them walking around PvE today.

Meanwhile, the engineer has total crap for weapons until it reaches level 60, at which point the Grenadier trait makes it god tier. That means that for 75% of the leveling process, though, you’re doing next to nothing. Even now you still get people who probably rolled an Engineer, played it for a few levels, then just quit because they seemed weak, being totally unaware that the engineer is presently one of the most overpowered classes in the game.

Ranger is kind of in the middle ground here but suffice to say that you will find that you deal very good damage and won’t die very much, if at all, whether using melee or ranged weapons. You just need to reach the point where you actually have good traits, first.

Thank you all. I will continue to play Ranger.

I’ve played many games where classes are broken, and Ranger being my first class I had to take the time to check if this was the case.

I am inexperienced, and I had no idea whatsoever that the game I am playing now alters at level 80. I just thought it sort of… “Scales”

Good to know there is diversity in this game!

I’ve used every which build you can think of under the ranger, and unfortunately the only one I found that worked in both PvE and WvW (I don’t sPvP), is a full berserker build with LB and SB.

I’ve tried a full BM bunker build with healing, and it just didn’t kill fast enough; eventually I’d just get overrun, where as in the berserker build, the enemy group would be long dead before they approached. The Greatsword just doesn’t do enough damage. The 1h sword is better than the GS, but it roots you into place and the damage just sucks compared to the LB. It also doesn’t help our pets damage was nerfed, so we really can’t rely on their damage output.

Axe + Axe or Axe + anything just doesn’t crank out the same amount of damage our nerfed shortbow does. I’ve also found having the warhorn to buff the LB’s attacks via might just isn’t really worth it compared to what utility the shortbow could provide. Depends on what mode your playing OP, but from my experience (and I’ve used the Ranger since the beginning), nothing works quite like a full glass cannon build.

In PvE, more often than not your pet can tank most anything (including some champs) long enough for you to kill anything before it reaches you. In WvW, everything just ends up in a zerg anyway.. either your part of one or getting run over by one, so your better off just cranking out max damage. Your not in the front lines so more often than not, enemies won’t survive long enough to get close.

Besides it’s always kind of funny to see a fully defensive class take a 4K+ crit from a LB then immediately run from their zerg.