Guild Wars 2

From The Complete Ranger’s Handbook:
``A woodsman and tracker, as well as a dangerous fighter, he combines good combat skills with a few extra abilities that give him many options and decisions during play. He boasts the courage and strength of a warrior and the stealth and self-reliance of a thief. He combines the druid’s affinity for the outdoors with the devotion and magical aptitude of a priest. He’s a hunter, a tracker, and a survivalist. By temperament and by choice, he’s a loner, often preferring the company of animals to people. Without question, he’s one with nature, sworn to protect the inhabitants of the wilderness and preserve the integrity of the land.’’

In history, rangers were sort of like modern-day park rangers, in that they patrolled a wilderness. They were low-born peasantry in the middle ages who would be commissioned to range and protect the lands of the aristocracy against poachers and the like. They would use weapons that could be readily made, such as bows (swords were obviously a touch expensive for peasants).

In literature, popular rangers include Tolkien’s Aragorn/Strider, Chaucer’s Yeoman and the legendary Robin Hood. I believe the Roman goddess Diana was also said to be an inspiration behind the RPG archetype. In more recent literature, R.A. Salvatore’s Drizzt is also a famous ranger.

In computer RPGs, I have to mention Minsc from Baldur’s Gate, only because he has a genuine Miniature Giant Space Hamster (named Boo) as his animal companion In Final Fantasy and Maple Story, they are a specialised Archer class. In Nethack, they specialise in bows and thrown weapons.

YES: Rangers have often used swords, including two-handed sword, in the past.

NO: Ranger does not mean ranged-weapon user. It means one who ranges (look it up in the dictionary).

NO: Rangers have never used black powder weapons. You are thinking of Hunters from WoW, a completely different class to the Ranger (and I believe entirely unique to WoW).

YES: I am sure there will be a dozen more threads over the weekend asking the same questions over and over and over, but hopefully this thread will save us one or two.

And who cares tbh? I play ranger coz for me it IS hunter/archer type (there is nothing closer to it in GW), and nothing will change it.

I wonder why some ppl feel they are supposed to teach others what to think, lol…

During the napoleonic wars a british regiment, the royal corsican rangers, were equiped with the baker rifle. Therefore rangers have usedblack powder weaponry and your statement is false.
(edit for spelling)

Terkov.4138:

And who cares tbh? I play ranger coz for me it IS hunter/archer type (there is nothing closer to it in GW), and nothing will change it.

Pretty much this.
I’m only interested in (max-)ranged fighting, so I was stuck choosing between Ranger and Warrior here. Wasn’t all that enamoured with longbow on Warrior, and saw that Rangers could trait longbow for 15ØØ range, so that made my choice.

Regardless of what a ranger is supposed to be in lore, I (and I assume many others) chose one simply because they were the closest thing GW2 provided to a max-range fighter. Had there been a “mercenary” class that could use all ranged weapons (and had 15ØØ range on at least one of them) or a sniper type of class, I’d have rolled with that. But as it stands, you want range, you go with ranger.

Terkov.4138:

I wonder why some ppl feel they are supposed to teach others what to think, lol…

This thread was a response to the many other threads of people telling us what to think. lol. Unlike the other threads, I supported my case with something more than ``just because’’ or ``it’s stupid.’’ It also gives those who have no idea what a Ranger is an idea of what was likely in the minds of the developers when they designed this class for the game, allowing them to then understand why it ended up the way it did.

Brokadocious.8743:

During the napoleonic wars a british regiment, the royal corsican rangers, were equiped with the baker rifle. Therefore rangers have usedblack powder weaponry and your statement is false.

Anyone with a shred of reading comprehention would see that it was a post about the ranger archetype, not the word ranger. The Lone Ranger, for example, rides across the range, but he is in no way associated with the archetype. Same goes for all the military units who have had the `ranger’ title: they are using it for the word (one who ranges), not the archetype.

So who decides which rangers get to be in the archetype and which ones don’t? ANet have their vision of the ranger, and it’s not governed by anyone else’s idea of what a ranger should be. Which real or fictional ranger before was a spirit-summoning shamanistic type, for example? Precedent doesn’t and shouldn’t have any weight on what the ranger should be.

And yet, ArenaNet have matched up with the classical Ranger perfectly. It seems pretty clear to me what their intention was. This thread was a response to players stating that ArenaNet were wrong and attempted to justify their decisions.

Just because the results lined up does not mean that their intention was the same as yours. Unless there is some statement by AN which support your theory, people have no reason to believe it.

Also, you don’t have to look at a ranger in terms of an archetype. They can also be defined with a purpose instead. You say that their duty is to essentially patrol a section of land and protect it. I believe whatever is required to perform that job is fair game. If it takes a bow, cool. If it takes a rifle, cool. If it takes a freakin’ golem(asura racial which can be used by a ranger btw), I don’t care as long as it gets the job done. Archetypes are often too rigid for any kind of creativity, and their criteria are almost never fully fulfilled.

These posts always make me smile. You know, that awkward smile when someone does something embarrassing and there’s really no other way to react but turn away, smile, and shake your head.

You can use and literal deffinition, or Arragon reference, or any dictionary to define something as a base value. I’m a human, I have a deffinition in a book. But does it sum me up in my entirety? No.

People don’t care about mellee weaponry on their toon, we all fully understand that every class has ranged and Mellee. We know, get over it. We do however care about sub-par options In that category. I’d rather have the necros DD at this point.

Regardless of anyone’s deffinition, “How too” park ranger hand book, military or otherwise. The classes in this game(with the exclusion of the new ones, and even then the Gaurdian retains qualities from GW 1 classes) retain similar class mechanics from their original design.

So since you like word association, let’s play. If I say GW1 Ranger, here’s what might come to mind:

1. Pets
2. Bows
3. Traps
4. Spirits (to a much lesser degree)

Now let’s assimilate more, what are 85% of our traits devoted too in GW2? Couldn’t be those 4 things could it?

Now if we aren’t “supposed” to use bows then why are they our strongest weapon? And why do our traits accommodate them more than any other weapon?

And the first 75% of your post is basically telling us how weapons don’t matter, it’s the idea of the class, then you say they can’t use a certain weapon(which by the way, that black powder point is wrong as already mentioned, I’ll add colonial Americans to the list of black powder using rangers)? Where’s you credibility noaw?

Not everything I this world is black and white, get your nose out of the books, use some rational thought and common sense and come over to the gray area, there’s plenty of room. If a “ranger” was a teleporting staff wielding Druid that shapeshifted and called the power of the cosmos to smite his enemies, I bet you’d still be using the same definitions to defend the class. And in case you don’t get it, class names have nothing to do with functionality. Like I said, it’s nice and cozy over here in the gray. That, or stop trying to justify a video game with IRL logic…

Face it folks, the GW2 class title of Ranger is just a churched up name for “Archer.”

I am glad they made a normal Ranger class rather than some boring Archer class. You can still use bows, now go use them.