Guild Wars 2

I’d like to compile a list of what the ranger is good at; not only for my self, but for other people as well. I’d like this topic to be helpful to the ranger community and not depressing with just a bunch of negative comments.
Now to the point, if you know of something the ranger is good at and makes them helpful to certain situations and would like to post giving a reason why, i will add it too the list so everyone has easy access to the comments. Please, no negative commentary like the “Rangers good at dying.” We’ll start off with 3 basic lists such as PvP, PvE, and WvW. Lets see what we can come up with.

PvP—-
(Oxtred) Good close holder, decent support at mid
—-PvE—-
(Oxtred) Offensive support, reflect damage (with sig), good conjures wielder
—-WvW—-
(Oxtred) Condition Bunker good for 1v1, trapper decent in groups, good in small scale roaming
—-General—-
(Atherakhia) Longbow has longest range in game

pve: offensive support, good reflect damage ( with sig), good conjures wielder. Also easy to play in open world.
WwW: condi bunker overpowered for 1v1, trapper is decent, good in small scale roaming.
pvp: good close holder, decent support at mid.

Best of luck as this topic is going to be very hard to develop given the standing of the class imo. That said, and to try and remain optimistic, I’ll mention that Longbow is the highest single target ranged attack in the game and while its main failing is an extreme lack of burst, piercing arrows allows it to always deliver its damage on the selected target with minimal positioning.

It’s my hope that Rapid Fire will at least give it the kind of pressure it needs to finish off targets more successfully but it will still need more work to ever provide a real anti-periphery role in an organzied group unfortunately.

Best of luck with your thread. A lot of untapped potential with this class but too many faulty mechanics and poorly laid out traits to really maximize their real value.

PvE: Being the lone condition user in dungeons. Ranger provides better heal support than Necromancers do, have comparable DPS in condition modes, and can buff direct attackers with Frost Spirit and Spotter. A single water field under Zadorajny’s burn phase or Volkov’s 15 bleed stack attack lasts for long enough to negate all conditions and reverse all damage.

Needless to say, there’s a place for only one condition user per party before overwriting makes the second user relatively useless.

Waterfield every 40 30 seconds

That’s it. nothing else

ilr.9675:

Waterfield every 40 seconds

That’s it. nothing else

If you going to be negative at least get it right it 30s at the lasts for 10s and clears condis.

Group play:
Spotter – party wide precision buff
Spirits – party wide – Damage, Burning, Protection, Swiftness, Healing condi cleanses and resurrection.
Party Wide Boons – Fury, Might, Protection, Regen, swiftness and vigor (most of these can be perma)
Pets – healing, condi cleanses, boons.

Solo play
Open would pve is a face roll.
Highest damage at long range.
Some wvw roaming specs are very strong

PvP
Strong home point and far point, can contribute to mid point
Strong resurrecter

General
Masters of soft cc and poison

Fixed.

everything else you posted are opinions which are wrong for more reasons than I’m actually motivated to write down

If that is you opinion then fair enough.

But its hard to take that statement very seriously with out any form of backing up. Whilst we can’t have everything all the time and things have to be giving up for some thing else, we have a large quantity of tools available to us we just need to select the most appropriate skills/traits/pet for the situation we are facing.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJATRjMq0yaHLWsw1ag9gaZAEwNHibw9WcEt9Fb8UE-TVTBABPt/gxHCgE1BwnmAKVhwMlgXpEzTVCi4BAUp6Klp8YhLAAAHBgAAIA38mZzbGYoDdoDdoDtbezbezbezSB80WA-w

WvW zerg Ranger , Mid to front line / Flanking postion never go head in with the hammer train let them take the hit first , then swoop to the commander.
in the new patch we’ll have a Evade on the second part of this Skill , will allow us to move more Freely while Zerging.

there are many Advantages to playing a Ranger but its also Very Situational.

Survival terms bunkering is our best.
and the class has to Sacrifice a lot of survival for power (in terms of duration+ recovery) signets and full zerker is the most Probmatic with its long cooldowns and limited use.

pros
Very flexiable
Great bunkers
Has Ranged Damage (without having to Sacrifice too much traiting with Traiting it can Be Very dangrous)
Pets in small groups/ skirmishing they can be a Advantage is used Correctly and not forgotten.
Mobility is high with Selected weapons, S+D , A+D , Gs/lb , the class naturaly at its core has Evasivive mobilty not speed or Avoidance.
Cons (currently)
Large zergs the Escape methods arn’t of distraction like the other Medium classes(excluding Engi)
needs Blocks, dodges and evades well timed to Survive.
Eyes on the screen and on your toes, there is no slacking currently, you slack off as a ranger and you’ll be dead, the class don’t have many Base line skills that allow a Effective escape/damage Migration without Heavy traiting)

hope this helps.

Rangers are great for solo PvE. They’re nearly impossible to kill. Even if they manage to over-aggro, as long as the bad guys can’t do enough damage to kill them outright before they get their pet healing them (skill 3) working, they’ll be back in the fight.

Enfinity.8420:

---

PvP—-
(Oxtred) Good close holder, decent support at mid
—-PvE—-
(Oxtred) Offensive support, reflect damage (with sig), good conjures wielder
—-WvW—-
(Oxtred) Condition Bunker good for 1v1, trapper decent in groups, good in small scale roaming
—-General—-
(Atherakhia) Longbow has longest range in game

PvP : Good close holder ? I would say mediocre close holder, remember that ranger has very little stability uptime, Guardian is far superior, a good ranger will hold for few minutes, a good Guardian can holt forever. Decent suport build at mid.
PvE : Easy game mode, everything is good
WvW : Good roaming class, inferior to most thief roaming builds/condi engi/Hambow warrior/PU mesmer

Surprised no one said this yet:

-Has lots of evades which can be annoying for the enemies
-Has easy access to poison which can be very deadly in the hands of a skilled player
-Tanky pets can (if used right) be used as meat bags between you and the enemy
-12s quickness combo’d with 12s invincibility for you can be a killer
-If done right, pets on passive will strafe with you in front of you and can be used to block attacks

Oh, and rangers ARE good at almost dieing. If you go down and then you get your enemy to go down, even if you’re at half downed health, then you will win the fight.

sminkiottone.6972:

Enfinity.8420:

---

PvP—-
(Oxtred) Good close holder, decent support at mid
—-PvE—-
(Oxtred) Offensive support, reflect damage (with sig), good conjures wielder
—-WvW—-
(Oxtred) Condition Bunker good for 1v1, trapper decent in groups, good in small scale roaming
—-General—-
(Atherakhia) Longbow has longest range in game

PvP : Good close holder ? I would say mediocre close holder, remember that ranger has very little stability uptime, Guardian is far superior, a good ranger will hold for few minutes, a good Guardian can holt forever. Decent suport build at mid.
PvE : Easy game mode, everything is good
WvW : Good roaming class, inferior to most thief roaming builds/condi engi/Hambow warrior/PU mesmer

PVP if a decap class really wants they cause even a bunker guard to lose a point, we can have 30s of stability if we really want, just have to check you opposition comp before the match starts to decided between RaO or spirt. holding for a few minuits is long enough for help to come.

PvE yep

WvW: the only class that bother me is a PU mez and well just stroll away at your leisure

Some rangers are excellent at irritating other people by knocking things away from melee. It seems like we got this stealth ninja elite skill added, not sure if it’s a nerf or a buff.

Ranger have a huge build variety

WvW:

• High damage melee – with lots of stability and still tanky enough
• High range sniper – with good mobility and damage evasion
• Condi bunker – with lots of evasion and healing
• Regen group support – with perma regen and swiftness
• Beastmaster bunker – with lots of evasion and healing
• Smallscale spirit support – with damage and survival support
• Hybrid bleeding – with huge bleed stacks and many crits
• Condi trapper – with good control and hybrid damage
• Control build – with lots of stun and immobilize
• Some more viable builds I forgot

PvP (Ranger is not meta in tPvP, but in solo-q they can fill almost every position in a decent way and make you have a good team setup more often):

• Midpoint spirit support
• Homepoint regen bunker
• Roaming berserk sniper

Builds can also be adapted very well on the enemy team (e.g. “Sick ’Em” against thieves or Entangle against necros)

PvE:
In PvE there is no build variety needed. Its all about berserker.

Other advantages of the Ranger

PvE:

• Easiest class for leveling
• Unique support for dungeon runs (spotter, frost spirit)
• Easy champion farming from range
• Additional motivation for map scouting (pets)
• Soloing content is easy (but takes long)

PvP:

• High build flexibility
• Good group support
• There is a couter-build for almost every enemy build

WvW:

• High build flexibility
• Viable in all positions (even melee frontline)
• Long-lasting Waterfield
• Logest invulnerability (6s + extra up to 6s with sustainable pet)
• Longest stability (28s plus boon duration)
• Perma swiftness and regen possible
• Evasion and vigor-support possible
• Good mobility on sword and greatsword
• Good AOE damage possible
• Reduces damage on your team by switching the pet regularly before it dies
  (e.g. 1/6 less damage if 1/5 of your team is rangers)
• Control by Immobilize and stuns
• Damage reduction with high protection uptime or bark skin
• Many Poison fields
• Access to many different conditions
• Very good access to vulnerability, cripple, bleeding and poison
• Great roaming support class
• Soloing against superior numbers of enemies with bunker-builds possible
• Access to passive (EB/SoR/KE) and active (SotF/SoR/HS) condition remove
• Best of all boon spells: Plasma of the Siamoth

Major disadvantages

• Sometimes unreliable Pets
• No high-end burst damage
• No meta t-PvP class
• Jack of all trades, master of none
• Easy leveling results in unskilled players
• More efford needed to become a really good player (pet-management, sword skills)
• Little access to support in large scale fights – only water-field, fire-field, horn#5 and spotter (assuming the pet is dead most of the time and spirits die too fast)