Guild Wars 2

This thread is an attempt to address one of the most frequent discussions/arguments I see on this forum. To whether the “bow ranger” is/was intended inside the Ranger class. The reason I want to address this is because for AN to do their job and take the communities opinions on board, it helps if the community agree where possible or have coherent actionable suggestions for the dev team.

I wont copy and paste AN’s summary of the ranger where it makes multiple “bow” or “archer” references. Because I shouldn’t need to.

It is extremely clear that the GW2 Ranger class was supposed to incorporate a heavy use of the bow.

1. GW2 Ranger is classified as a “Returning profession” from GW1 which was primarily (but not limited to) bow use. There were a number of bows available to use and a strong focus on ranged skills to chose from.

2. Clearly new MMO’s try to add their own twist on things and GW2 did this very well. However there’s a huge market segment of players that like “Archer” professions. And AN obviously wanted to continue to provide a class in the game that caught that target audience.

3. The Devs were active in the GW1 forums taking feedback from the Ranger community on what they’d like to see in GW2’s Ranger class.

Compromises:

1. While predominantly a ranged class. The GW2 ranger is obviously looking to incorporate a melee option. Where W.O.W might have had a melee option when enemies reached a range. GW2 want to go beyond that and allow players to have a melee weapon as their main weapon in a build. That’s clear to see.

2. Classess in this game (given the loss of the trinity) were very clearly intended to be less cohesive and more open to adaptation. So it’s a valid argument to suggest that Ranger for this reason is not exclusively supposed to be dps. When you consider the “jack of all trades” despite not being so in GW1 it does make sense to provide a melee option in GW2 to fulfill that role.

Conclusion

Ranger is primarily the ranged focused class in the game. This is extremely clear in the classess promotion, it’s history in GW1, it’s lore in the game and it’s official summary. Also it makes abundant sense to appeal to the “ranger” players that part make the MMO sea of players.

However the class is not exclusively ranged it is inclusively ranged.

But the important point, the most crucial point in this thread and one of the root causes between players having this discussion is.. We do NOT have as viable ranged builds for all content as we do melee builds. Even in core mechanics and meta such as dungeons/fractals the only viable builds are melee focused.

That’s the bottom line. Our melee capabilities are way more viable than our ranged.

AN have options, do they fix broken class or do they make a new Ranged class which features viable bow builds?

To Summarise:

It is extremely clear that the GW2 Ranger class was supposed to incorporate a heavy use of the bow

Yet the meta dictates a strong bias toward the melee builds. Sometimes completely leaving out Ranged possibilities.

When people defend this option they might think to say “well the class wasn’t intended a solely ranged”

This is true, but people are asking for a Viable bow build in all content. That’s not the same as asking to be the best ranged class, nor is it asking to be better DPS than melee necessarily.

These are the misunderstandings I wish to dispel. Please feel free to add your own clarity or interpretations.

I like to think of guild wars 2’s ranger as the DnD4e ranger, with the ability to put their focus into either ranged attacks, close ranged attacks with swords, or the ability to pick up a pet and become a beastmaster. it feels like everything that was intended with this profession (I even rolled a ranger in dnd that’s nearly identical to my gw2 ranger :P)

I don’t have an issue standing at 20 units away from a target and pew pewing personally, But I do have an issue where apparently our DPS lacks with Longbow. Some of us want to play a class as narrow and focused build as we can, that’s why we have multiple classes I would think. Why make multiple toons being Jack of all Trades and master of none, when I want to have multiple toons being master in at least one or two.

I wish wish wish that the Ranger and their pet naturally worked as One. In other words, any AoE boon distribution is distributed by the Ranger and pet. Also, when the pet receives boons it is transferred to the Ranger. That way in dungeons Rangers can stand back and pew pew and everything is as if they were within melee range, sharing and receiving buffs.

Edit: They should change Strider Defense to Strider’s Companionship.

shortbow is a pretty strong weapon. it’s completely usable for both zerk and condi builds. ^^,

The class mechanic for rangers is pets, not bows.

The balance between ranged and melee is the same across all classes – lower risk and lower damage. Rangers have no special strengths (or weaknesses) in terms of ranged weapons, and rangers using bows are just as ‘viable’ as engineers using rifles.

Problems with rangers are all about pets.

Naevius.3185:

The class mechanic for rangers is pets, not bows.

Didn’t say it was/wasn’t.

Naevius.3185:

The balance between ranged and melee is the same across all classes – lower risk and lower damage.

I didn’t say the problem was specifically damage either – I ask for viability. Please try not incorrectly presume what I am saying otherwise we might not be able to have a progressive discussion.

As for bow viability in PVE I believe the problem is a mixture of two things.
Firstly In meta-groups the survivability I am supposedly gaining for being ranged is not something I can harness in the meta. Therefore the dps trade-off I am subject to for the privileged of being ranged is hurting my relationship with other classes in groups.
Secondly I dispute the ranged weapons offering anything the melee weapons don’t in a survival sense. WvW is a clear example of this where melee provides better mobility to run away. But just sticking with PVE, the evades on offer from the melee weapons more than out-do the supposed privaledge of bows “low risk” power. Sword 2 takes you to short bow range, 180 and hit it again and you’re in longbow range. There’s nothing high risk about that.

A valid counter arguement is that while the sword can do that on a very low cooldown and be safe. The long bow is still in that area but still doing damage right? This is a failure of the dungeon mechanic. Stacking and LOS are exploits that need to be addressed. But aside from that, the sword having to stop doing damage in order to evade off to regen is akin to bossess and mobs using reflect etc. Basically ranged weapons have periods where they need to stop attacking too – as per an underlined gameplay mechanic..

Naevius.3185:

Rangers have no special strengths (or weaknesses) in terms of ranged weapons, and rangers using bows are just as ‘viable’ as engineers using rifles.

This may be a valid point (I don’t play engie) but it’s not a valid excuse. I could probably argue with good reason that given the rangers deep ties to GW1 and the lore of bow use, compared to a completely new class like engineer. That the bow to ranger being viable is much more important than the rifle to Engineer. But I won’t make that point because I’m not here to compare sword sizes on who’s class is worst. I want AN’s design promises to manifest given how long this games been released and I want that for all classess. Every day certain classes are left out of content is a day AN are failing to deliver on their core gameplay promises.

Lace.9472:

Firstly In meta-groups the survivability I am supposedly gaining for being ranged is not something I can harness in the meta . Therefore the dps trade-off I am subject to for the privileged of being ranged is hurting my relationship with other classes in groups.

You won’t notice it in regular dungeons, but you will definitely notice it in higher level fractals. Fights like Mossman, Archdiviner, Grawl Shaman and the dredge fractal end bosses are not simple stack, los and FGS fights and are quite punishing to inexperienced melee DPS. Ranging those specific bosses is much easier and safer. There may be a few more examples in there as well, but I’m quite unfamiliar with PUG strategies in fotm (if they’ve changed recently)

Bows in general are just quite… Boring weapons tbh. There’s no finese, depth in playing this style.

I feel like customizable weapon skills or new mechanics need to happen, because now when I try to use Bow I feel like in GW1, using a minimum level longbow just to pull another pack of mobs safely and then abandon it.

GW2 tried to mix WoW Hunter class with GW1 Ranger and add melee options on top of that. What we have now, is unidentified slimy mixture of these two games with no real idea behind it.

I give GW2 time to fix Ranger to PTR/release of Warlords. If nothing happens till then, I’ll be happy to not waste time and hope anymore.

Naevius.3185:

The class mechanic for rangers is pets, not bows.

The balance between ranged and melee is the same across all classes – lower risk and lower damage. Rangers have no special strengths (or weaknesses) in terms of ranged weapons, and rangers using bows are just as ‘viable’ as engineers using rifles.

Problems with rangers are all about pets.

“False”, False, False and False, then “True”.

1. Mech on pets, which are not working for nearly 2 years.
2. Ranged and melee balance isn’t same. Melee pwns by far, except at casters.
3. Lower risk and lower damage – How many kitten times do we have to tell you people that there is no lower risk at all??! Go ahead, fight your right and Fail once again. Sorry.
4. Rangers are JoaT.
5. Yep, pets are huge problem, but not “all” of it. Whole design bleeds by many wounds…

I don’t meant to be rude, but seriously, get over the ignorant propaganda…
There are serious problems we want to see fixed ASAP.