Thief or ranger

Thief or ranger

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Posted by: MANPOSSUM.4691

MANPOSSUM.4691

I’ve been gone for about to months now, after the death of a computer. Before that I had a ranger and a thief, both vying for the spot as my main… Just wondering, since I’ve been gone, has the ranger been buffed enough (at all) to actually become viable as a hard pvp/wvw class? Or should I main a thief? I play a pretty even mix of both pve and wvw, and very rarely play spvp.

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Posted by: warriorjrd.8695

warriorjrd.8695

Asking on the ranger forums may get you a biased asnwer but i’ll do my best to leave my opinions out of it. Theives have been nerfed to hell and back, being forced into a very small choice of builds that are actually effective. Ranger has gotten some great buffs, including stealth on the longbow to really mix up fights. I personally wreck most thieves on the battlefield with my signet power build, however if I come across a skilled thief, I find myself in some trouble.

It also depends greatly on what you’re looking for. Both classes are, I would say, two of the best roaming classes in wvw. However if you’re looking for larger fights in a wvw scenario, thieves may have a bit more trouble with that than a ranger.
Thieves have been nerfed nearly every patch leaving them with few options, however if you have a bit of skill you can work wonders on a thief.
Rangers are still severely underestimated but not without reason, pets have yet to get an AI tweak and are still, for the most part, useless against enemies that have a lot of AOE.
For pve, I would recommend a ranger, the mobs cant really kite your pet so you can easily get max DPS, also if you ever do go downed, Lick wounds is probably the best downed skill in game.
In a roaming wvw scenario I would recommend a theif, they have great mobility, much greater than a rangers, and stealth allows for quick escapes if you find yourself face to face with a zerg.
Zerging in wvw, I would say a ranger, with piercing arrows we can dish out some nice mutli target damage and can offer some support with healing spring.

Little sloppy explanation but I hope it helped. Coming from a ranger I would say roll ranger for everything, but we do have our weaknesses, so maybe try both classes out for yourself


It is not what you do, but how and why you do it that counts.

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Posted by: Zenith.7301

Zenith.7301

Ranger’s alright roaming, but the thief can roam just as well, disengage better, get his kills quicker, and he’s still useful in a teamfight due to stealth allowing him to harass the backline or skirting the melee train with s/d evade spam.

Ranger’s fun, but the pet is just a really broken mechanics and your utilities and traits are not as polished as the thief’s.

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Posted by: Atherakhia.4086

Atherakhia.4086

Let me start by saying I’ll never be satisfied with the Ranger class until it’s a RANGEr. So when I tell you my opinion of this class, keep that in mind as I can be a bit biased and not being completely fair since ranged options for this class are awful.

With that said, I would just go Thief. Both classes are about equal in overall utility for WvW, but the Thief is infinitely more versatile and powerful. I’d rank the Thief as 8th most useful class out of 8 whereas the Ranger would be 7th most useful class out of 8 simply because the water field is more valuable than the blast finishers on the Thief.

Thief is also a much more rewarding (fun) class to play. The vast majority of your time with the Ranger will be spent auto-attacking with a dead pet. Most of the skills aren’t that ‘fun’ to use because they’re all utility in nature and don’t really offer much damage benefit. This would be fine except the vast majority of the utility you gain is single target only so it’s only useful to the Ranger. The Thief on the other hand has a lot of the same utility minded attacks, but they all do a lot of damage and offer much more powerful utility overall.

I would agree somewhat with the first response that the Thief class does tend to be the target of a lot of nerfs, ut they’re still a very powerful class with a true identity and role. The ranger may have more specs to choose from, but they’re mostly ineffective when compared to a Thief too.

Until we get some basic quality of life adjustments to this class I wouldn’t bother playing a Ranger unless you’re a true fan of this type of class and can stomache always fighting an uphill battle without the tools to do it.

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Posted by: MANPOSSUM.4691

MANPOSSUM.4691

I was building my ranger as a sb/axe+torch condition build, are those still viable or has something happened to that?

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Posted by: Atherakhia.4086

Atherakhia.4086

I was building my ranger as a sb/axe+torch condition build, are those still viable or has something happened to that?

That’s the bunker build most run and is really the only truly viable build the class has. If you plan to run full apothecary/settler’s with condi spam you’ll be fine. I wouldn’t use both SB and Axe though. SB has been made mostly redundent with the recent nerfs/buffs. Go greatsword in your offslot for defensive utility and an escape and you’ll have a blast. There’s also sword+dagger/WH as an optional off-hand.

Still far inferior to engineers and necromancers, but it’s still effective.

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Posted by: NargofWoV.4267

NargofWoV.4267

I was building my ranger as a sb/axe+torch condition build, are those still viable or has something happened to that?

That’s the bunker build most run and is really the only truly viable build the class has. If you plan to run full apothecary/settler’s with condi spam you’ll be fine. I wouldn’t use both SB and Axe though. SB has been made mostly redundent with the recent nerfs/buffs. Go greatsword in your offslot for defensive utility and an escape and you’ll have a blast. There’s also sword+dagger/WH as an optional off-hand.

Still far inferior to engineers and necromancers, but it’s still effective.

Just stay out of the front of Zerg/Zerg battles with this Cond/Bunker build, it can still be a stun/aoe/your a bag mill, leave this kind of thing to the Guardian or Warrior types.

Narg, Ranger JQ
Heavy Halo, Warrior JQ

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Posted by: Kjeldoran.3849

Kjeldoran.3849

ok i’ll try to be of help by listing pros and cons of both classes in every situation

Thief


PvE (open world)
pros:
- high single target damage
- a lot of ways to escape
- very strong at range with p/p build

cons:
- low survivability in large fights
- low aoe damage (SB and d/d still get low aow damage compared to other classes)

PvE (dungeon)
pros:
- high burst damage (thieves are welcome in almost every party especially for the big burst against bosses)
- high survivability (because you can save yourselves by going stealth and ress your party)
- high mobility (you can easy reach every obstacle and avoid almost every trap/trick)

cons:
- you can never fight a boss face to face… so hope to find a good team because if you get mob aggro… you will simply be one shotted (with boss auto attack)
- as you can easy avoid avery aoe/attack… the cons is that you NEED to avoid every single attack… or die.

sPvP/tPvP (hearth of the mists)
pros:
- very good in 1vs1
- you can easily kit almost every class

cons:
- also in small group fights thieves starts to lose effectivenes
- condition builds may be hard to kill
- thieves condition build isn’t strong as other classese’s one

WvW
pros:
- high roaming capabilities
- really much ways to escape from combat and return in when you are ready

cons:
- really not so strong in zerg fights
- low capacity to be of help for your zerg

Ranger


PvE (open world)
pros:
- really easy to handle almost every situation tanks to your pet
- very good single target and aoe damage
- high ruvivability

cons:
- not so resistant if under direct attack (or if you can’t avoid enemy attacks)

PvE (dungeon)
pros:
- very good damage
- high survivability and ways to avoid boss attacks
- good party support (with spirits, pet’s abilities, traps/fields)

cons:
- a lot of people still consider ranger a weak class… but it isn’t anymore (also if something can still be implemented)

sPvP/tPvP (hearth of the mists)
pros:
- high damage capability
- to many ways to avoid eney attacks (simply exploiting ground structure)
- high resistance

cons:
- really weak against full condition builds (few ways to remove conditions)
- weak against some noob class combos (like the skull crack warrior and the phantasmal mesmer)

WvW
pros:
- really a good class for zerg vs zerg fights and great capacity to deal massive single target and aoe damage
- excellent zerg support with water field, aoe regen, fury (in general: pet abilities) , traps
- knock back (cliff + knock back = toon of fun!)
- good at solo roaming

cons:
- not so good escape abilities so you can be easily kited or attacked and killed by 2 or more enemies (for example if 2 roaming players see you is really hard to escape unless they have 0 mobility)

That’s all

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Posted by: UrMom.4205

UrMom.4205

My main was my ranger, until i started wvw’ing. I tried a couple other classes but the play style of the thief really lends itself to wvw. The ability to get out of a fight so fast and safely translates into a lot of confidence for me. This allowed me to be more offensive and to try fights that I wouldn’t have tried with my ranger. However in pve, if it’s a single mob or vet i’m fine with my thief but multiple targets and my thief gets wrecked. I always use my ranger in pve for the tankiness of it.

Team Raven [TR](Dead)
Wu Táng Financial [Táng] – YB

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Posted by: pheroth.5306

pheroth.5306

“WvW
pros:
- really a good class for zerg vs zerg fights and great capacity to deal massive single target and aoe damage”

They have massive aoe damage?

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Posted by: Morbridae.8607

Morbridae.8607

Let me start by saying I’ll never be satisfied with the Ranger class until it’s a RANGEr.

I believe that the ranger got its name not because of its ranged attacks, but because they can do ranged missions, as in soloing into a jungle or another dangerous place, to scout or kill something.

Morbridae (Norn Necromancer)
@ Sorrow’s Furnace (VE)

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Posted by: Atherakhia.4086

Atherakhia.4086

Let me start by saying I’ll never be satisfied with the Ranger class until it’s a RANGEr.

I believe that the ranger got its name not because of its ranged attacks, but because they can do ranged missions, as in soloing into a jungle or another dangerous place, to scout or kill something.

That’s all well and good… also irrelevent.

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Posted by: warriorjrd.8695

warriorjrd.8695

Let me start by saying I’ll never be satisfied with the Ranger class until it’s a RANGEr.

I believe that the ranger got its name not because of its ranged attacks, but because they can do ranged missions, as in soloing into a jungle or another dangerous place, to scout or kill something.

That’s all well and good… also irrelevent.

Think of a park ranger rather than an archer. Just because we can wield two bows doesn’t mean we have to excel at range, hence the reason we can wield a sword and a greatsword and do great damage with both.


It is not what you do, but how and why you do it that counts.

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Posted by: warriorjrd.8695

warriorjrd.8695

“WvW
pros:
- really a good class for zerg vs zerg fights and great capacity to deal massive single target and aoe damage”

They have massive aoe damage?

Piercing arrows has no cap to the targets (if it does it larger than just 5 people as i’ve hit atleast 6 with one shot before), if the enemy lined up in a row it would go to the end of its range. Think of it more as multi target damage rather than AOE like barrage or meteor shower. However as I have found out multiple times, multi target auto attacks don’t bode well with retal


It is not what you do, but how and why you do it that counts.

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Posted by: Atherakhia.4086

Atherakhia.4086

Let me start by saying I’ll never be satisfied with the Ranger class until it’s a RANGEr.

I believe that the ranger got its name not because of its ranged attacks, but because they can do ranged missions, as in soloing into a jungle or another dangerous place, to scout or kill something.

That’s all well and good… also irrelevent.

Think of a park ranger rather than an archer. Just because we can wield two bows doesn’t mean we have to excel at range, hence the reason we can wield a sword and a greatsword and do great damage with both.

I followed where you were going… I’m saying I don’t care (in a good way)

I want the ranger to live up to the character class 20 years of MMO’s before it paved the way for. The same one I played for 20 years (Im old…). This doesn’t mean that melee for the class should be an afterthought like it was for WoW, but it certainly shouldn’t have bows being an afterthought either.

Since the range nerf for Shortbow, the whole weapon has become redundent. Once they buffed axe and fixed sharpenning stone last patch, I’d argue shortbow isn’t even on the same page as axe anymore (offensively anyway). Longbow is just lawlworthy.

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Posted by: MANPOSSUM.4691

MANPOSSUM.4691

Is 1h sword worth using?

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Posted by: Burnfall.9573

Burnfall.9573

Ranger’s alright roaming, but the thief can roam just as well, disengage better, get his kills quicker, and he’s still useful in a teamfight due to stealth allowing him to harass the backline or skirting the melee train with s/d evade spam.

Ranger’s fun, but the pet is just a really broken mechanics and your utilities and traits are not as polished as the thief’s.

Totally Agree.

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