Guild Wars 2

As many know ranger has over time begun to trail further and further behind the other professions, but now it seems the release of HoT finally cracked a lot of players, I’ve seen dedicated Ranger mains from launch changing professions because Ranger as a Class struggles to keep up. I now see pleas on Reddit to have the class reworked, or at the very least maintained. The Class is Riddled with community devised work-arounds (Looking at Sword auto attack) because we care for our class and we want to see it viable.

I’m sure many will agree when I say, Please, PLEASE, Someone help our class. It’s really sad seeing people who were so passionate about a class almost feel like they’re forced to leave just to keep up.

I’m doing just fine.
I’m even being asked to bring my ranger, lately.

I’d only say this:
It always is the people. It always has been.
For maintaining a high DPS – there are self-sufficient builds.
For maintaining a huge DPS party boost – there are builds.
For Zerk and Condi – there are builds.

I don’t know which environment is this being addressed at but PvE is just fine. I haven’t yet played much of the PvP and when I do I’m usually testing around.
Quality of life improvements are needed at almost everything but a dedicated Ranger can play around with them. They only make life uncomfortable but not non-viable.

Druid actually offered us everything we lacked.

Yes he is just fine, but in this mythical world of pve where damage meters don’t exist and no way of seeing actual damage output it is hard to see fault. You as a ranger lack buffs for your party unless you bring spirits, your condition builds lack sustained damage, and your power builds require you to stand far away and contribute nothing to your team except a pet buff. Why bring a ranger when u can bring an elementalist or an engineer to fill the roll better. Enough with your petty idealism.

“Just fine” the story of the ranger. Our time to shine is coming soon(raids) and our elite spec will finally show why it was made.

Tehpanzy.9843:

You as a ranger lack buffs for your party unless you bring spirits, your condition builds lack sustained damage, and your power builds require you to stand far away and contribute nothing to your team except a pet buff

Wrong, wrong aaaaand wrong.

A boosting druid brings 28% unique DPS boost for the party (Frost spirit needed)
Condition build has higher sustained and overall DPS than a sinister engineer
Full Melee Relentless build is absolutely viable and one of the better DPS builds.

Don’t mistake random comfortable builds of selfish people for “Ranger”. Those who main the class feel slightly offended by those statements and it keeps the rest in dark lies.

Tehpanzy.9843:

You as a ranger lack buffs for your party unless you bring spirits, your condition builds lack sustained damage, and your power builds require you to stand far away and contribute nothing to your team except a pet buff

Why wouldnt we bring frost spirit in PvE? Since the recent PvE damage reduction change spirits arent a hindrance in PvE.

What power build requires us to stand far away? The meta power LB/S+A is all melee. You double burst with quickdrawn rapid fire in melee then go back to sword for 10 seconds. Is vulnerability capping a boss while giving our party spotter and frost spirit “contributing nothing?”

Tragic Positive.9356:

Wrong, wrong aaaaand wrong.

A boosting druid brings 28% unique DPS boost for the party (Frost spirit needed)
Condition build has higher sustained and overall DPS than a sinister engineer
Full Melee Relentless build is absolutely viable and one of the better DPS builds.

Don’t mistake random comfortable builds of selfish people for “Ranger”. Those who main the class feel slightly offended by those statements and it keeps the rest in dark lies.

Any link for sinister ranger vs engi?

I wouldnt say full melee remorseless was one of the better builds. Double greatsword for QD mauls gives up moderate damage to the power-meta and completely lacks range utility.

Tehpanzy.9843:

Yes he is just fine, but in this mythical world of pve where damage meters don’t exist and no way of seeing actual damage output it is hard to see fault. You as a ranger lack buffs for your party unless you bring spirits, your condition builds lack sustained damage, and your power builds require you to stand far away and contribute nothing to your team except a pet buff. Why bring a ranger when u can bring an elementalist or an engineer to fill the roll better. Enough with your petty idealism.

What? Forget idealism, lets just stick with reality. Please, you are rehashing tripe from 2 years ago. Everything has changed since then and your statement about power builds requiring us to be at Range has NEVER been true in the 3 years the game has been out.

Highest damage output for Ranger (on any build) is, and always has been, right up close to target. Ranger has almost always had the highest damage at range, as well.

All our melee weapons have counter attacks or evasive attacks so we can attack up close, without even needing to dodge. (SW/GS/D) Obviously, we are supposed to fight up close.

Druid brings party heal, mobility, and can shred break bars like there is no tomorrow.

I am sorry but there is (or SHOULD) be a distinction between “druid” and “ranger”. Druid might be fine nowadays but ranger is clearly far from fine. Pet mechanics suck. Everybody has a form of reflection ( have you ever met two scrappers that can put a reflection dome? It is fun) and also a form of being immune to damage. One hand sword is nausiating, and there are no good traitlines for signets (you have to drop %10 dmg trait for less cd on signets)

I really want to ask to the person who made the ranger (not druid, only ranger without druid talents. Emphasizing on this second time) trait syste: Have you ever played ranger? And why do you hate us so much?

@Raven

My DPS tests with Viper stats from the other day.
Ranger: http://s1.postimg.org/os2rzyori/Ranger_Viper_DPS.jpg
Engie: http://postimg.org/image/5l4of0jbh/full/
Metabattle rotations used for both cases (even the 48 step Engie one)

About the Double GS… There is no double GS build as far as I know. I’m talking about this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ljux9o5FGM
That’s correct – it brings little Ranged possibilities but for day to day runs it’s amazing (even the pull from PoS is nice when you get used to it). Much more AoE and burst in comparison to the standard ZerkMeta Frost Spotter. Weaker tunnel phase, but much more vuln uptime.
All in all, it’s better when “on the move”. For zerking bosses down the melee LB+S/A is better. For that you are right.
But Remorseless BM build is viable for a specific content.

Tragic Positive.9356:

@Raven

My DPS tests with Viper stats from the other day.
Ranger: http://s1.postimg.org/os2rzyori/Ranger_Viper_DPS.jpg
Engie: http://postimg.org/image/5l4of0jbh/full/
Metabattle rotations used for both cases (even the 48 step Engie one)

About the Double GS… There is no double GS build as far as I know. I’m talking about this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ljux9o5FGM
That’s correct – it brings little Ranged possibilities but for day to day runs it’s amazing (even the pull from PoS is nice when you get used to it). Much more AoE and burst in comparison to the standard ZerkMeta Frost Spotter. Weaker tunnel phase, but much more vuln uptime.
All in all, it’s better when “on the move”. For zerking bosses down the melee LB+S/A is better. For that you are right.
But Remorseless BM build is viable for a specific content.

I hope you realise that you’re comparing a ranger with ~20 continuous stacks of might (assuming that herald stuck around as you were doing quick dps checks) against an engi with no might in those pictures.

And you’re considering condi ranger as our dps, which honestly, I don’t think any condi should be the main source of dps for ANY profession. Our condi trapper/whatever ranger is in a fine position atm, but is definitely leagues behind engi in that regard. Our main problems are with our direct damage builds and pets.

You keep putting a silver lining on ranger, I’ve seen you post on many of these threads, ranger is definitely not in a good place atm.

I too feel ranger is actually in a fairly decent spot atm…maybe not the highest dps, but definately brings a large dps boost to the party. Just the other day, I ran a lvl 58 fractal, as a heal/dps boost druid, with 4 other fairly high dps members. I was actually rather stunned at how fluidly and quickly it was cleared.
The only thing about ranger/druid which still annoys the hell out of me, is Sword Autoattack…I love the sword, and every other skill on the weapon is perfect, just I pray that they remove that kitten autoattack root. Also Pet AI/Attacking needs some work, like being able to choose which pet skill goes into your f2 slot.

Hmm. My biggest issue with ranger is that your build is pretty much decided for you. You will be taking spotter. And you WILL be taking frost and sun spirit.
Sadly. Anyone that wants to run anything else probably isn’t even going to be considered. Why would you ever bring any other ranger for example.

Its one of the reason I HATE this games group buff design. I wish the UNIQUE buff mechanics were tied to the class mechanics. Not to trait lines or utility skills. Because once there tied to traits/skills your going to be taking them…always…forever…with absolutely zero deviation if you want to be even slightly competitive. In a game where one of the biggest draws for me was creating a build to fit your playstyle. That’s depressing as kitten.

Edit: Corrected for accuracy

@Shadelang.3012 I do agree rangers are very much forced into either 1 or 2 builds to be considered for high level content. It saddens me aswell…biggest mistake they made with gw2 was removing the old gw1 skill bar/secondary class system. The build range there was absolutely phenomenal.

Shadelang.3012:

Hmm. My biggest issue with ranger is that your build is pretty much decided for you.

I may be wrong as i don’t play other classes much, but don’t all classes suffer from this?

Eggyokeo.9705:

Shadelang.3012:

Hmm. My biggest issue with ranger is that your build is pretty much decided for you.

I may be wrong as i don’t play other classes much, but don’t all classes suffer from this?

Haha yes. Its not a single classes flaw. I should probably have stated “My biggest issue with GW2”

Its actually another reason I wish we had dmg meters. In other games it didn’t matter what build I ran as long as I out damaged/healed/tanked my competition. Here though theres no real way to prove what your doing is actually helping more than an alternative. Only the potential can be measured. Not the reality.

Back on topic though. Yes the PvE community in this game is pretty self confining. Were all so worried about POTENTIAL that we don’t allow for any variation. Only what is potentially most useful can be taken. And your own playstyle be kitten ed.

It doesn’t matter how skilled you are in this games community The best player in the game can be running a suboptimal build because it fits his playstyle and people will immediately ignore his skill in the game. In the case of a ranger if you don’t have frost spirit sun spirit and spotter it doesn’t matter how good you are at the game in the communities eyes, your worthless.

Edit: Holy mother of grammar that was bad. I prob missed a bit but its better than it was.

Mr Greggles.5908:

I hope you realise that you’re comparing a ranger with ~20 continuous stacks of might (assuming that herald stuck around as you were doing quick dps checks) against an engi with no might in those pictures.

…

I hope you realize that I stopped my test sooner than 2 million (estimated damage damage from raids) because Revenant and 1 more player came stacking all the might around – which would ruin any value of the self-DPS test?
If I’m able to bring ranger to as high effectiveness as I can while all the rest of you are stuck with human factor – I’m just as well allowed to claim that Ranger is fine when I can prove he is. Can you prove it otherwise?
I’m afraid you couldn’t. Proof of contradiction wouldn’t allow you that. Which is exactly the method I used for my proof.

The only thing I need to rightfully make my claim is to find 1 build/rotation/stats/game-play that fulfills the demands. The question is: “How can Ranger be useless if there is at least 1 person who plays him efficiently (up to meta level)?”
No. It’s not magic. It’s basically what my signature says.
People usually suck or refuse to get better and that makes Rangers awful and weak. It’s not the class. It always has been the people. Why do you think we are the only class with made-up name of “BearBow” ?

staff dps either needs to be increased or condis added to it to make condition druids more viable.

I think that’s my only complaint right now, CAF being so tied to Staff is fine as long as it’s a viable weapon for both condi and power builds. The quickdraw bonfire build would be a lot more useful with staff on swap if it could apply condi as well. This would also make it a better replacement for LB in a power build if it applied non damaging condis like vuln/cripple etc.

Prophet.1584:

staff dps either needs to be increased or condis added to it to make condition druids more viable.

I think that’s my only complaint right now, CAF being so tied to Staff is fine as long as it’s a viable weapon for both condi and power builds. The quickdraw bonfire build would be a lot more useful with staff on swap if it could apply condi as well. This would also make it a better replacement for LB in a power build if it applied non damaging condis like vuln/cripple etc.

Ill be honest. I don’t want even MORE reason to run staff. I want some reasons to use other weapons relevant to the current metas. For druids staff works as either a direct replacement for GS or a replacement for longbow. It fills both roles decently well. it just doesn’t have burst damage is all but its sustain is pretty decent combined with all the utility it has. And it doesn’t have ANY of the flaws those two weapons have. (evade skill on one only performs at the end of the skill. Other weapon is hard countered by tempests)

I think core rangers need some love too. Lb gs ranger is utterly crap nowadays.

Does this really matter with regards to the content available today and PvE? All classes work. There is no damage meter pre/post encounters. There is no inspect feature to view what other players are running.

Structured PvP, there may be some issues but is it a issue of our access to HoT or due to balance issues and only one beta weekend? Also how matches are currently being done. Just something to think about.

Then there is the whole WvW side of things whereas the questions above still come into play and hold true. Is this a issue of one beta weekend, recent nerfs, bugs, or just plain ignorance due to time with HoT?

PvE, in my opinion, is a none starter. Run berserk and be happy. More structured players may have X, Y, and Z requirements but overall trait and gear for damage and you finish things. Spvp and WvW are still in progress due to the constant, although more steady state of changes lately. Personally I find the most difficult time now is in WvW trying to find a comfortable build that is good for small scale or solo play. Finding that so far has proven difficult especially with the Druid, staff, and overall gear…

Everything else in HoT has been easy mode. More so on my Ranger than my Guardian.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Can you prove it otherwise?
I’m afraid you couldn’t.

I can.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=K2ZHhJQn0B8#t=2356

From the devs themselves.

Ronorra.1530:

I can.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=K2ZHhJQn0B8#t=2356

From the devs themselves.

“A lot of concerns, issues…”
That may very likely be QoL changes a lot of us have been talking about that make it easier for everyone to use but do not hit the numerical potential of ranger.

And what is the proof again? The video you posted are developers reacting to people’s cries on forums (some of them might be justified, some of them not).
What does it have in common with any proof whatsoever? How can anyone search for any correctness in the video you posted? How does anyone know developers or players aren’t lying? You posted a video and suggest everyone would believe in what they said (while they haven’t said anything at all, except balance changes which they already addressed with numerous nerfs that deny your vision of useless ranger – even Developers themselves disagree with you)