Guild Wars 2

Yea, the 1h sword looked really appealing to me before the game released. I still stuck out the class and tried to make it work for a long time (played ranger from Beta until a month or two ago) until I finally rerolled.

Now that I’ve used mesmer 1h sword and thief 1h sword, I can’t see going back to ranger.

Because I always played a melee ranger with the option of a bow in my D&D campaigns.

Because bows suck at the moment. I am far more useful with GS/Sword than I ever was with a bow. I ran LB/SB for a long time, then swapped to melee only and it was like night and day.

Of course, once I rolled a Guardian and a Warrior I shelved the Ranger, but that’s a “big picture” issue that goes further than your specific question.

Melee has basically always done more damage than ranged in this game, as the whole risk vs. reward type argument. If you’re in the mix of things you’re putting yourself in danger but are dealing more damage rather than pew pew’ing from a safe distance.

Also it has already been stated that the term Ranger comes from the wide area the person would “range”, not long distance attacks. Those other games really did embed it in people’s heads!

All our weapons are pretty beastly for a lot of different reasons, most people have put up the best reasons why already with greatsword and 1h sword, though if you want top efficiency of your 1h sword you will HAVE to turn off autocast on the pouncing and do it manually!

Personally I love having both a melee set and a range set at all times so I’m ready for anything

Swords + traps/bonfire/healing spring = combo fun.

For instance if you lay down a frost trap at your enemies feet it goes off straight away, and if you follow up with a GS leap you get frost armour.

And if you use wolves they often do combo finishers as well.

In PVE I often use Sword torch with 2 traps, and use bonfire a lot. It really helps with the DPS.

Short bow is for kiting and PvP. And LB is only good as a siege weapon in WvW.

Rangers as a ranged class… ha ha haaaaaaaaaa. Rangers do better with melee than with ranged currently. Longbow is borderline useless in terms of damage, and the devs themselves agree, and shortbow is pretty much pvp only at this point. Axes are are generally bad as well.

D&D
Ranger is what you could call any form of skirmish hunter. Sure they have a long history of using ranged weapons, most notably the biggest longbows you can fathom, but they have become rather adept at small scale close quarters combat.
They are your scouts.
They are the assassin that lives in the great outdoors.
What is wrong with a wilderness assassin than playing your stereotypical hunter? Absolutely nothing. It is just another form of expertise, call it sub category for Ranger as hunter is a ranger so too is scout, wilderness assassin and war dancer.

On another topic your Thief class in GW2 is nothing more than a gimmick name for a basic Rogue which also can be thieves, assassins and spies.

Where do people get the idea that rangers are dedicated long range combatants?

The term “ranger” is used in Lord of the Rings to describe the men of Rohan and Gondor; they traditionally used both sword and bow and were notable for being elusive guardians of the region.

Dungeons and Dragons, the grand-daddy of mainstream RPG’s had a “ranger” class as we know it. These rangers had an affinity for nature and again being elusive in the wilds, they had a pet – and importantly, they were proficient both in dual wielding melee weapons AND in using a bow.

Guild Wars 1 had a “ranger” class, that again had nature magic and a pet – their “native” weapon was a bow, but Guild Wars 1 had a dual classing system, classes were expected to take a second class to gain a second skill set to complement the first. Ranger’s “class” specialty was expertise, which gave them superior evasive skills and reduced the energy cost of ALL martial attacks both bow and melee – so many many many rangers (Not least the famous bunny thumper given a nod in AC) ran melee weapon builds – they were extremel;y proficient at it, creating slightly squishier but far more mobile combatants than primary warriors.

Guys, even the Army agrees Ranger = Range, because the best snipers work there.

No, not really.

cause white lion!

/edit darn it, now i want ‘fetch’ and 2hand axes for the ranger ^^

Maybe this has already been said, but just because the name has the word “range” in it, doesn’t mean it’s exclusive to ranged attacks.

As someone who got their start in D&D decades ago, to me, rangers are more of a naturalist who are at home in the wilderness and have a kinship to the wild. As far as a profession goes, Rangers could wield either the bow or a dual wield a sword and dagger with great proficiency. (in D&D anyway.)

I think a lot of MMO players today are too conformed into thinking that the class that exclusively does non-magical range dmg is the class that uses the bow.

If anything, the non-magical ranged exclusive profession of GW2 is the engineer, as the closest thing to melee they can get is the flamethrower, and that is still ranged, albeit, short.