Anyone that has played ranger type classes in an mmo can immediately tell just how poorly this class was developed in GW2. Ranger does no particular tasks well because specialization is impossible to achieve with the given trait layout and skill selections you have to choose from.
In PVP DPS and Healing are king. The ranger is not capable of producing enough DPS to outperform the other classes in this game. They are incapable of healing themselves fast enough to survive PVP in this game because of the lack of armor protection making them an ideal target for high damage results. As soon as you heal your health will be right back down.
I’ve been maining ranger since launch and have yet to see this class dominate and out perform any other single class in this game in PVE or PVP. Other class DPS better, apply conditions better, have better defense, and better offense. The one benefit of being a ranger is having your pet take Aggro away from you and mercy healing you when you’re down. The thing is Anet tried to make this class dependent on you having a pet and that pets abilities combined with yours making you equal to the other classes when in reality your weak by yourself and your pet is weak also.
The trait tree doesn’t have traits that compliment the idea of sharing power between a pet and the ranger. It’s attacks or abilities don’t change to compliment the fighting style you choose. If you choose to use bows or melee weapons pets still respond and act the same. Pets also only apply “moderate” conditions to foes. 2s of this 3s of that. If you blink too long you’ll miss what they did. They’re not effective enough to actually be useful in combat. In PVP the most effective ranger pet is the wolf and the spider because “fear” and “immobilization” can either buy you time or give you a better chance to escape as a ranger.
Other than that your pet is just another critter for players to ignore while they drain your health with their attacks. Pets don’t do nearly enough damage to be effective in pvp combat. They’re barely effective in PVE combat and anyone that wishes to challenge that tell us about how long it took your pet to solo just the average game goon. It takes forever for them to kill something by themselves.
Then you take that same pet and apply it to fighting another actual player and you can bet on disaster which is exactly what happens. Theifs and Mesmers make a mockery out of the pet AI system. I truly don’t see how any developer threw a pass at that during testing without realizing stealth and multiplicity make pets bug out.
Just vanishing will send your pet either flip flopping in place or looking for a random target to run off and attack. This is perfect for when that thief is now raining blows on you and your pet is now way off in the distance attacking moa birds. Of course you have your commands like attack my target, return, etc. etc. but how good is micromanaging those skills while you’re in the middle of a fighting for your life?
Guildwars had so many ideas that made more sense than this game it’s like GW2 is a step back. On the original ranger nothing brought more peace than knowing you don’t have to use a pet if you don’t want too. You could build a strong capable independent character to your liking. Investing half your fighting power into a pet in GW2 is like making Peyton Manning your Superbowl quarterback when you’re up against the Seahawks. Chances are things are not going to go well.
When you look at the traits for ranger one thing that should be clear to anyone is that the most of the traits don’t make sense for the category their in. You have Marksmanship which is for bow specialization but it gives you traits for use with swords,axes,and traps? Then you have Skirmishing which gives you options for using Bows? and Traps? Then you have wilderness survival (which is what traps should be in btw) and you have things like pet skills?
By the time you scatter your points you realize they you have traits you don’t need just to get something you do need to help compliment you’re actual play style. The sad part is that as a ranger if you want to survive you will always be forced to dump 30 in W/S just to get toughness to survive.
This class is just a cluster of bad ideas that should have never made it into the game. The entire ranger class needs to be reworked. I’m not trying to say that the class needs to be made invincible but it should at least been created so that it had a fighting chance to begin with.