Guild Wars 2

I have been thinking about hopping back on my ranger for fractals, raids, wvw, and open world pve. I generally play with a group and right now I know that for healing magi is meta. But I was wondering how viable would nomads be for a ranger. I’d get the heals and vitality still and would have toughness to survive. I’m thinking more on the support aspect. Would I be welcomed in raids as a tank healer or shunned for not being meta?

Rangers can’t tank Raids so you would be immediately kicked.

If a mesmer can tank why can’t a ranger? I’ve also been told my guardian can’t tank and eles can’t tank even though I’ve been quite good at guardian tanking and have seen some nice bunker eles. So that being said why can’t a ranger?

Well… The issue is not that the ranger can’t “tank” raids. The issue is that no profession can support as much as the mesmer support it’s team while tanking.

At the begining of the raids, there have been player tanking the boss as guardian, Engineer… even thieves (well yes). But the group optimisation ultimately led raid team to use mesmers as tank because they have naturally crapy dps but godly support. Meaning that It would be a waste to give them a dps spot but their support is so much needed that there is no way a group can give up a mesmer.

Any profession can tank, it’s just that no profession can replace the much needed mesmer and the only place it could belong is the tank place. That’s both sad for the mesmer and all players that want to tank with something else than the mesmer but that’s what group optimization led to.

Thank you for the clear reasoning