Guild Wars 2

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Rate-classes-in-WvW/page/3#post2686074

That’ll fix ya…

While there isn’t too much detail on explaining what the Ranger’s problem is… I do have to agree with the majority of people in there when it comes to their overall ranking of the classes.

Some of the highlights include:

Equinox.4195

Sorry, rangers. Every class can do everything better than you.

lioka qiao.8734:

Rank 8: Ranger
Hah yes it comes down to this. One of my good friends (Gamadorn) is one of the best rangers on our server and he says it’s outclassed by other classes. I can believe this. I’ve analyzed what they can bring to a zerg and it isn’t much. Utilities get locked into healing spring, muddy terrain, and then survivability. Longbow is hard countered by retaliation.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

#8: Ranger. This is the hard part. You see, I gauge the classes based on how noticeable their performance in the WvW field is, or how well they perform while under my control. The biggest problem with rangers is that, for every ranger I’ve ever engaged, they’ve amounted to nothing greater than “I’m vaguely aware that someone is shooting me. Oh, it isn’t a warrior?”. That is to say, I don’t feel their field presence at all. Which is unfortunate, since I see a lot of rangers in WvW. They’re usually defending keeps by shooting at someone, or in a zerg tagging someone at maximum range. Other than ambient fire, I don’t see rangers performing that well at all. Rangers might as well not exist. I mean, I’ll miss using their pets as epidemic bait, but otherwise… they shoot at people? I"d inquire about their chase skills, but I’ve never had to run from a ranger.

Even some of the more common Ranger posters on this forum go on about how the Ranger isn’t a viable option outside of roaming (where any class that is good in sPvP will obviously make a strong roamer).

I’m curious if others agree with this and what you would change about this class to resolve it?

This is because players do not value trap rangers or resurrection, for whatever reason, I don’t know. Our unblockable traps are excellent zerg busters—particularly frost. Apparently, finishing isn’t valued either: zephyr’s speed, quickening zephyr, longbow, or RaO are all really good ways to get off stomps.

Bears are undervalued in the zerg (stability training + black or polar bear).

Just look at everything we deal with: everything is undervalued until they (every other profession’s main’s) can claim it’s OP and nerf us to “our place as huntards”.

That’s what this is all about.

Think of spirits: Community: “WAHHH ANET WAHHH. SPIRITS ARE PAPER” now that spirits are functional, it’s “ZOMG SPIRITS ARE OP”.

We need to stop letting others in the community push us around. Start standing up for your profession. If your friend is truly the best ranger around, then he or she should know enough to defend the profession. It’s time to stand up for rangers; to learn how to properly play them. To see the strengths instead of the weaknesses.

I bet those very people would say “guardian has no weakness” or “necro has no weakness”. That’s not true! If you’re a real player you will learn and exploit the strengths of your profession against the weaknesses of others.

Well if it’s all really a perception problem like you say (you know I don’t agree with you from my past comments), do you think simply improving Ranger animations would go a long way in ‘fixing’ the class? Like should all F2 abilities put a mark above a player’s head when they are used? Doesn’t even have to be unique per pet. Maybe just every time your F2 ability buffs an ally or removes something, a graphic of a bow firing is played above their head?

As for the traps (I usually use spike), they tend to go unnoticed because there are just so many fields on the ground and what they actually do isn’t very unique (especially frost). I could see the traps going largely unnoticed.

I told you frost was undervalued. Even you don’t see what I’m talking about with frost.

See, traps are special. They’re unblockable. Spike immobilizes when traited with trap potency, bet you didn’t know that. That’s not special? The fact that it’s invisible to them and either immob/cripples or inverse quickness? (i call the chill condition in gw2 "inverse quickness or inverse time warp).

Not to mention viper’s nest, which pulses an unblockable poison. Remember: poison negates healing by a factor of 1/3.

Amazing how every wvw video with ranger I’ve seen in a year, I have never, ever once seen a zerg video with a trap ranger. That’s how I play in T1 with strikeforce, the guild that wiped TW and WARD last night with equal or lesser numbers. I’m basically giving you all of my “secrets” because I’m sick of the whining.

(Sorry WARD and TW—I only saw that one fight before I had to log out. We won that fight and I’m proud of it. I’m not saying SF is better—we win some and lose some. But last night we were better. That could change today, of course.)

Oh, so the medium armoured ranging class isnt the best for full on large scale battles? What a surprise.

Rangers are outstanding in sPvP, smaller scale battles and dualling, which is what the class is really designed for, its our niche and we excel there.

I wouldnt get too worked up about us not being welcome in GvG or serious zergs. As chopps has pointed out we can make ourselves useful but we wont ever be the best or 100% nessesary for the survival of the team in such situations because its not our niche.

Its no different to how warriors cry all day long on their forums about OP spirit rangers in sPvP. Thats our field and its where we dominate. Large WvW battles is where warrior and guardian dominate (with the support of backline players).

Chopps.5047:

I told you frost was undervalued. Even you don’t see what I’m talking about with frost.

See, traps are special. They’re unblockable. Spike immobilizes when traited with trap potency, bet you didn’t know that. That’s not special? The fact that it’s invisible to them and either immob/cripples or inverse quickness? (i call the chill condition in gw2 "inverse quickness or inverse time warp).

Not to mention viper’s nest, which pulses an unblockable poison. Remember: poison negates healing by a factor of 1/3.

Amazing how every wvw video with ranger I’ve seen in a year, I have never, ever once seen a zerg video with a trap ranger. That’s how I play in T1 with strikeforce, the guild that wiped TW and WARD last night with equal or lesser numbers. I’m basically giving you all of my “secrets” because I’m sick of the whining.

(Sorry WARD and TW—I only saw that one fight before I had to log out. We won that fight and I’m proud of it. I’m not saying SF is better—we win some and lose some. But last night we were better. That could change today, of course.)

Share your build please, so I can wipe SoR and Bg too :p

I don’t buy into that logic, cufu, mainly because Anets stated design goals are for every profession to be viable everywhere. Also, teamwork is rarely utilized. Imagine a bunch of zerk/longbow/eagle eye rangers always porting out of enemy range with mesmers. Imagine flanking with shadow refuge and dropping traps to bust their foolish pin sticking.

It’s not all stack on commander and spam AoE. Think outside the box.

Ok, here you go diehard (note: this is a zerg build, definately swap to burstier pets if you must roam or catch up to people, perhaps use a greatsword and the run signet too for that purpose):

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAnfVjEVx15VuVs2BkWhMh9wQckH59IWSFRMljUF1eA-jUyAIMBRSAIVBgOAlHLiGbJsIas6ZA1NmCeR1CBoYOA-w

This is why traps are in the crit damage / precision line. To allow for builds that proc on crit AND do condi damage. With fury, I’m at ~70% crit chance depending on what trinkets and food I take. That’s along with basically 1000 condition damage and a good amount of healing power for longevity in the cosmic collision that defines zerg battles.

And it’s not my exact build but it should be a good starting place for anyone who wants to play this way. I like the balance of critical chance (bleed procs), condition damage, and healing power.

The condition removal looks weak but it’s a team build focused on the strengths of ranger. In many instances, team condi removal and healing spring is plenty. If not, consider switching the spike trap for signet of renewal or going for empathic bond, but, personally, I find this build to work just fine, besides, I really need that healing power, stability training, and zephyr’s speed (BM grandmaster).

I just wish piercing arrows was an adept trait so I could take that too.

I know that was Anets intention but honestly they failed, and its inevitable. To say a thif can be a frontline soldier as well as a warrior is objectively wrong. To say guardian to bring to AOE pain a necro can is objectively wrong.

Classes are better at different things and theres just no way round that unless you made all the classes boringly simular with the odd cosmetic change.

Rangers group support mechanic (spirits) doesnt scale well generally, and is better in medium size conflicts, and our AoE (traps) is strong now doubt, but we have only 3, some on 20+ s cooldowns. A necro can run 4 marks and 3 wells and shorter cooldowns.

I am certainly not denying rangers can bring some pain. I run traps and can do plenty damage when running with my guild, and I have no doubt 5 LB rangers would ruin people very quickly if they focused people down.

All I am really saying is when it comes right down to it, when you have a limited number of people you can pick (such as in a GvG), I dont see why a ranger would be picked.

For open WvW then sure, no harm is some people being rangers, the ice fields are great, the extra fire fields are great, you certainly contribute. But for 100% efficency I’d pick a well necro over a trap ranger or zerg vs zerg anyday.

EDIT: and interesting build.

One of our best commanders frontlines with a thief, cufu… I’m sorry for disagreeing. I’m really not trying to be a jerk here.

I strongly believe the lack of build variety in wvw is a result of a lack of gold. People don’t want to respec their ranger or use traps. They don’t want to explore different gear sets with their thief. They want to “pew pew” with arrows with zerker gear or 2 shot with zerker in a thief. Just my observations over time.

PS—wells are awesome, no doubt, but traps are invisible and unblockable. Trap rangers and wellomancers share a lot of similarities though, that’s true. Best thing I like about necro is the well of corruption. I sure like that well when I play necro! No doubt!

Nothing wrong with disagreeing, carry on :P

I’d love to see a video of him commanding on a thief honestly. In the nicest possible way I think he probably commands well but contribute very little to the actual fighting, but regardless my point still stands.

A guild with 15 thieves as their frontline would be smashed to all hell by 15 warriors. Whether or not one commander thief can survive the clash or not, its the heavies behind him for are doing the work not him.

EDIT again: marks can be traited to be unblockable, and since yuor usually throwing traps/wells straight onto the group the invisibility before they go off only means anything on the first push.

Atherakhia.4086:

I’m curious if others agree with this and what you would change about this class to resolve it?

Implement an IQ test before rolling a character? And depending on the result the game will provide you with a suggestion.. :-)

IQ < 60 —> Thief
….
IQ > 140 --> Ranger

:-)

Chopps.5047:

Just look at everything we deal with: everything is undervalued until they (every other profession’s main’s) can claim it’s OP and nerf us to “our place as huntards”.

We need to stop letting others in the community push us around. Start standing up for your profession. If your friend is truly the best ranger around, then he or she should know enough to defend the profession. It’s time to stand up for rangers; to learn how to properly play them. To see the strengths instead of the weaknesses.

I agree a 100%.

The word OPTIMAL needs to be change to EASY and soon everyone will understand the current WvW and GvG meta.

Its optimal to play a shout Guardain
to
Its easy to play a shout Guardian

The GvG meta that is spilling into the WvW meta is stale and boring.

(Optimal or Easy) 20 man GvG meta

Frontliners 10
6 Guardians (Shouts, Consercration, Hammer 2, It does everything)
4 Warriors (Shouts, Warbanner, Hammer F1)

Backliners 10
4 Nercomancers (Marks)
4/5 Elemenalists (Fields)
1 Mesmer (veil and null field)
1 (Wildcard) Sniper, Additional Guardian. Necro, D/D Elementalist

Simplistic, stale and boring. That is optimal in my book or basically easy.

At this point, it doesn’t matter what ArenaNet does with the Ranger, people will just keep saying it’s a bad profession. And that will, in turn, prevent them from learning the advantages of the Ranger. It’s just ironic really.

Kasama.8941:

At this point, it doesn’t matter what ArenaNet does with the Ranger, people will keep saying it’s bad.

Indeed, people just like to QQ.. It’s way easier than L2P..

Kasama.8941:

At this point, it doesn’t matter what ArenaNet does with the Ranger, people will just keep saying it’s a bad profession.

I agree, until we can prove ourselves at least….

Hey you guys caught all my edits. Great job xD

Running in many zerg’s in BG’s, with many different Commanders on one of the top servers in the US, using Team Speak or watching commands given in /w or /s, I’ve yet to here a Commander say, " and Rangers do …. " Every other class I have heard a request for them to do something, heck even requests for water fields goes to a different class than ours. How many times have I heard, put an X in chat if you’re a … never Rangers.

My guild only gets excited to have me around when our Healing spec’d Guardian isn’t around or we don’t have speed and I have to give up one of my offensive weaps for a Horn to give speed.

I very largely agree with Chopps in this thread.
I’m not saying I think Rangers are the most useful in zergs and blah blah. We’re not and that’s because of our poorly designed weapons and profession mechanic. Plain and simple.

Despite all of this however there are still ways to be useful in groups. I do also agree that a large portion of “The lacking of build diversity” comes from the aforementioned cost of proper gear. On top of that you then have to carry said gear around with you as if Siege, Consumables, and other items didn’t take up enough space.

I’d like to see a few things happen;
- Improvements to weapons. We need more cleaves. There is no argument about it. I would like to see the sword simply reworked. The leaping can be very useful but unless you want the Axe to be a melee weapon we need it to be a standard run and cleave weapon. Perhaps redesign it to be more of a fencing, artful type to keep it unique. Idk.

- Improved Profession Mechanic. Pets, by their nature, are not suited for large scale combat. There’s numerous threads about this but so far my favorite idea was smaller, passive pets, that did not attack or take damage and instead apply effects in a radius much like Warrior Banners (Ranger always get the buff) but still had an active skill akin to what our current pets have. They could have active skills that gave fury, disabled foes, anything we have now! These pets could be anything from baby devourers, rats, parrots, weasels, snakes, you name it. I even suggested they could ride on our shoulders while not on “Guard”. You know you want that!

-Easier for long term Rangers to change stats. (This applies to every profession as well). I want to see all future Ascended Gear have stats that can be changed out of combat exactly how they hinted Legendary weapons would work. The gear is hard to obtain via time gates/materials and an appropriate reward would obviously be to simply have it be the last armor set your character needs. Then we aren’t carrying around 30 sets of armor, worrying about skill changes or updates, etc. We can be free to experiment and change as we want.

I’ll shut up now but yeah, we aren’t favorites for legitimate reasons but that doesn’t mean we’re 100% useless.

Or I agree, we are not useless, we just aren’t in primary need in Zerg WvWvW work. We do provide sustained moderate dps, often we take a while to die as we are usually in the back and do have a nice ranged AoE when using the LB. But nothing a Zerg Commander “needs” us for other than fodder.

I really think it’s a more simplistic issue than that guys. Yes, conditions and condition setups are successful, but they are unfortunately gauged against other successful condition builds. It doesn’t result in a lack of viability when compared to other classes, but a lack in unique role, which is truly unfortunate.

Direct damage for rangers suffers, not because of the output, but because of the lack of boon removal rangers have access to in order to push power damage through retaliation and protection. Do something as simple as make Barrage remove boons, or a trait that allows boon removal through attacks of some sort, and watch how quickly rangers jump up a few tiers.

Lastly, the one rangers struggle the most on, which comes from just overall “bad” or “boring” design; bringing something unique to the table. It isn’t an argument of effectiveness, it isn’t an argument of viability, it’s an argument of how simplistic the skills look, how simplistic they function, and how that is perceived by people. Rangers just never look like they’re doing anything useful. Skills look bland and have simple (but effective) functions.

It’s part of the reason why the PvP community is always arguing that the ranger is a low skill cap class, because everything is more or less pretty easy in function to understand. There are next to no rotations to perform, and skill are fairly easy to aim at opponents (not many ground targeted skills, slow moving projectiles, or telegraphed attacks that are dodged easily).

There are only 2 solutions the the ranger “problem” though; either the class receives changes (some trait and utility reworks would admittedly be a nice quality of life improvement), or the perception of the class changes. The community has put in a tremendous amount of effort highlighting where rangers shine, such as solo roaming, dungeon speed running, and dominating PvP and general PvE (every class dominates general PvE but still), but it’s always stayed fairly within the ranger community, and from the way it’s been looking lately, no matter what positive changes rangers receive, there is still going to be such a vocal, negative portion of the community that we won’t be able to push the positives of the class through the noise of the unsatisfied people. Ultimately, that is what the community is up against when trying to change the perception of the class to the rest of the gw2 world, but at least there are more and more ranger advocates every day.

I disagree with the value placed on the Ranger by most. As stated above by others, trap rangers are very valuable in ZvZ, GvG type fighting if you put time in to learn the gameplay. It’s not easy and it requires more activity than the standard SB/LB player is willing to put in.

A lot of Rangers also are still living in a self made fantasy world that would allow them to be effective in large scale combat wearing full zerker gear too, so people who can shrug off their damage come to view the class as an annoyance because we can be ignored until such time as we can be squashed. Someone mentioned not wanting to respec or spend gold to improve via new gear sets… that is probably very true.

Our class has a lot of good things going for it that people don’t appreciate. What drags us down, honestly, is the pet. If the pet AI was fixed and allowed to cheat in order to work properly against players and in common WvW scenarios, or removed in favor of a different mechanic that gave us full control over all of our power, a Ranger in a good players hands could be an elite WvW class.

Castaliea.3156:

-Easier for long term Rangers to change stats. (This applies to every profession as well). I want to see all future Ascended Gear have stats that can be changed out of combat exactly how they hinted Legendary weapons would work. The gear is hard to obtain via time gates/materials and an appropriate reward would obviously be to simply have it be the last armor set your character needs. Then we aren’t carrying around 30 sets of armor, worrying about skill changes or updates, etc. We can be free to experiment and change as we want.

Please please please, please please, please. I play a ranger, and only a ranger, have over a thousand hours logged in, and I’ve used exactly 1 set of armor. (Berserker gear, 6 Runes of the Ranger, berserker backpiece (Fractal Compactor—500 ecto investment, I’m NOT changing this) and prec/toughness/power (prec as main stat) trinkets.) I would LOVE LOVE to try out different builds, and I rearrange my traits every now and then, but getting a full set of armor and ascended trinkets is a ton of work, and costly to store all 12 pieces for one new set.

I hope either legendary armor is relatively easy to obtain (still working towards that legendary since December :/ and I’m unemployed soon to be employed), or ascended gear gets changed to allow for easy stat swapping. I want to try other builds gosh darn it!

SafiMoyo.5130:

Castaliea.3156:

-Easier for long term Rangers to change stats. (This applies to every profession as well). I want to see all future Ascended Gear have stats that can be changed out of combat exactly how they hinted Legendary weapons would work. The gear is hard to obtain via time gates/materials and an appropriate reward would obviously be to simply have it be the last armor set your character needs. Then we aren’t carrying around 30 sets of armor, worrying about skill changes or updates, etc. We can be free to experiment and change as we want.

Please please please, please please, please. I play a ranger, and only a ranger, have over a thousand hours logged in, and I’ve used exactly 1 set of armor. (Berserker gear, 6 Runes of the Ranger, berserker backpiece (Fractal Compactor—500 ecto investment, I’m NOT changing this) and prec/toughness/power (prec as main stat) trinkets.) I would LOVE LOVE to try out different builds, and I rearrange my traits every now and then, but getting a full set of armor and ascended trinkets is a ton of work, and costly to store all 12 pieces for one new set.

I hope either legendary armor is relatively easy to obtain (still working towards that legendary since December :/ and I’m unemployed soon to be employed), or ascended gear gets changed to allow for easy stat swapping. I want to try other builds gosh darn it!

Get me a job as a free ANet consultant and I’ll see what I can do.
Until then… /ignored by devs.

I’d say rangers are the worst ZvZ profession, but that doesn’t mean we’re terrible at it, hell SOMEONE has to be the worst, this is hardly a perfect game where everything is 100% balanced.

Traps, tanky DPS pets (bears hitting like a cat always makes me smile =D), Sig builds, zerker bow builds etc ALL do well in ZvZ, do they provide a lot of support for the Zerg? No, but they can certainly cause the enemies Zerg a number of issues.

As I was telling my friends, if PvE (and thus WvW) behaved like PvP where gear is obtainable for no effort and thus you can swap stuff freely without a care in the world the meta there would be changing CONSTANTLY, however it isn’t, and thus it moves at a snails pace because no one wants to experiment because they’ll be risking a lot of time and gold to do so.

Anet, give us gear like in PvP (IE unlock it so we can just pull it out and throw it away as needed).

Chopps.5047:

This is because players do not value trap rangers or resurrection, for whatever reason, I don’t know. Our unblockable traps are excellent zerg busters—particularly frost. Apparently, finishing isn’t valued either: zephyr’s speed, quickening zephyr, longbow, or RaO are all really good ways to get off stomps.

Bears are undervalued in the zerg (stability training + black or polar bear).

Just look at everything we deal with: everything is undervalued until they (every other profession’s main’s) can claim it’s OP and nerf us to “our place as huntards”.

That’s what this is all about.

Think of spirits: Community: “WAHHH ANET WAHHH. SPIRITS ARE PAPER” now that spirits are functional, it’s “ZOMG SPIRITS ARE OP”.

We need to stop letting others in the community push us around. Start standing up for your profession. If your friend is truly the best ranger around, then he or she should know enough to defend the profession. It’s time to stand up for rangers; to learn how to properly play them. To see the strengths instead of the weaknesses.

I bet those very people would say “guardian has no weakness” or “necro has no weakness”. That’s not true! If you’re a real player you will learn and exploit the strengths of your profession against the weaknesses of others.

Losing to rangers is not one of the guardian’s weaknesses. It is nearly impossible to kill a guardian as a ranger because we do little damage to them, they have a gazillion ways to remove conditions and they can outheal what little damage we do.

Sticking up for the class means demanding that Anet fix what’s broken in the class, improve our near useless pets, and give us better, more viable abilities as well as more killing power, all of which we desperately need. Pretending this class is viable or has “strengths” that aren’t easily outmatched or countered by other classes doesn’t help.

Cuchullain.3104:

Chopps.5047:

This is because players do not value trap rangers or resurrection, for whatever reason, I don’t know. Our unblockable traps are excellent zerg busters—particularly frost. Apparently, finishing isn’t valued either: zephyr’s speed, quickening zephyr, longbow, or RaO are all really good ways to get off stomps.

Bears are undervalued in the zerg (stability training + black or polar bear).

Just look at everything we deal with: everything is undervalued until they (every other profession’s main’s) can claim it’s OP and nerf us to “our place as huntards”.

That’s what this is all about.

Think of spirits: Community: “WAHHH ANET WAHHH. SPIRITS ARE PAPER” now that spirits are functional, it’s “ZOMG SPIRITS ARE OP”.

We need to stop letting others in the community push us around. Start standing up for your profession. If your friend is truly the best ranger around, then he or she should know enough to defend the profession. It’s time to stand up for rangers; to learn how to properly play them. To see the strengths instead of the weaknesses.

I bet those very people would say “guardian has no weakness” or “necro has no weakness”. That’s not true! If you’re a real player you will learn and exploit the strengths of your profession against the weaknesses of others.

Losing to rangers is not one of the guardian’s weaknesses. It is nearly impossible to kill a guardian as a ranger because we do little damage to them, they have a gazillion ways to remove conditions and they can outheal what little damage we do.

Sticking up for the class means demanding that Anet fix what’s broken in the class, improve our near useless pets, and give us better, more viable abilities as well as more killing power, all of which we desperately need. Pretending this class is viable or has “strengths” that aren’t easily outmatched or countered by other classes doesn’t help.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Comprehensive-Ranger-Suggestions/first#post2550550

You might like that.
It’s all wishful thinking though.

Chopps.5047:

I don’t buy into that logic, cufu, mainly because Anets stated design goals are for every profession to be viable everywhere. Also, teamwork is rarely utilized. Imagine a bunch of zerk/longbow/eagle eye rangers always porting out of enemy range with mesmers. Imagine flanking with shadow refuge and dropping traps to bust their foolish pin sticking.

It’s not all stack on commander and spam AoE. Think outside the box.

Except that’s how you win T1 fights with the smallest margin of error.

Sorry, but you aren’t better at tactics than the collective commanders of 3 servers. If “trap bombing” worked better you can bet your kitten they would be doing it just like how confusion spam was the fotm when wvw culling was in effect and how everyone necro mark spams now. They don’t use traps simply because it isn’t better.

Substance E.4852:

Chopps.5047:

I don’t buy into that logic, cufu, mainly because Anets stated design goals are for every profession to be viable everywhere. Also, teamwork is rarely utilized. Imagine a bunch of zerk/longbow/eagle eye rangers always porting out of enemy range with mesmers. Imagine flanking with shadow refuge and dropping traps to bust their foolish pin sticking.

It’s not all stack on commander and spam AoE. Think outside the box.

Except that’s how you win T1 fights with the smallest margin of error.

Sorry, but you aren’t better at tactics than the collective commanders of 3 servers. If “trap bombing” worked better you can bet your kitten they would be doing it just like how confusion spam was the fotm when wvw culling was in effect and how everyone necro mark spams now. They don’t use traps simply because it isn’t better.

Actually, trap bombing (if you have a group of rangers doing it) is capable of easily wiping a Zerg, the catch? The only way it works is if you hit them with double traps IE: you gank them at a well trapped choke point and then pour the traps on again.

I’ve done this twice with a group of rangers on TC while we were against SoR and BG. That being said it NEEDS to be a group of rangers (we had ~20 each time), and it NEEDS to be a double trap not just throw them at will traps.

Kasama.8941:

At this point, it doesn’t matter what ArenaNet does with the Ranger, people will just keep saying it’s a bad profession. And that will, in turn, prevent them from learning the advantages of the Ranger. It’s just ironic really.

No, I don’t agree with this. People will use whatever actually works.

Gamers have short memories when it comes to ‘meta’ and game balance.

If some combination of skills and traits lets Rangers dismantle enemy balls, then you are going to see a lot more Rangers running around pretty darn quick.

Fordel.3208:

Kasama.8941:

At this point, it doesn’t matter what ArenaNet does with the Ranger, people will just keep saying it’s a bad profession. And that will, in turn, prevent them from learning the advantages of the Ranger. It’s just ironic really.

No, I don’t agree with this. People will use whatever actually works.

Gamers have short memories when it comes to ‘meta’ and game balance.

If some combination of skills and traits lets Rangers dismantle enemy balls, then you are going to see a lot more Rangers running around pretty darn quick.

But, there are already Ranger builds like that dismantle enemy balls. It’s just only players who play sPvP who seem to have gotten the memo, while almost everyone ells keeps repeating the same message over and over. The Ranger works very well, most just plain out refuse to believe it.

Kasama.8941:

Fordel.3208:

Kasama.8941:

At this point, it doesn’t matter what ArenaNet does with the Ranger, people will just keep saying it’s a bad profession. And that will, in turn, prevent them from learning the advantages of the Ranger. It’s just ironic really.

No, I don’t agree with this. People will use whatever actually works.

Gamers have short memories when it comes to ‘meta’ and game balance.

If some combination of skills and traits lets Rangers dismantle enemy balls, then you are going to see a lot more Rangers running around pretty darn quick.

But, there are already Ranger builds like that dismantle enemy balls. It’s just only players who play sPvP who seem to have gotten the memo, while almost everyone ells keeps repeating the same message over and over. The Ranger works very well, most just plain out refuse to believe it.

There are effective Ranger build yes. But that is not what he means by “dismantle balls”. There are very legitimate reasons as to why Ranger is seldom left out of things. Trying to imply or even outright stating that one PvP build instantly solves a professions problems across all settings and gametypes is plain ignorant.

Kasama.8941:

But, there are already Ranger builds like that dismantle enemy balls. It’s just only players who play sPvP who seem to have gotten the memo, while almost everyone ells keeps repeating the same message over and over. The Ranger works very well, most just plain out refuse to believe it.

The ranger doesn’t work very well at all. It’s really strong in spvp (some builds), but this doesn’t mean the class is well designed. Take the spirit build everyone is now playing in tpvp, it’s a strong build, expecially in this stupid meta. But can we say it’s a well designed and fun to play build? No. Used to be the same with the bm bunker.

Kasama.8941:

Fordel.3208:

Kasama.8941:

At this point, it doesn’t matter what ArenaNet does with the Ranger, people will just keep saying it’s a bad profession. And that will, in turn, prevent them from learning the advantages of the Ranger. It’s just ironic really.

No, I don’t agree with this. People will use whatever actually works.

Gamers have short memories when it comes to ‘meta’ and game balance.

If some combination of skills and traits lets Rangers dismantle enemy balls, then you are going to see a lot more Rangers running around pretty darn quick.

But, there are already Ranger builds like that dismantle enemy balls. It’s just only players who play sPvP who seem to have gotten the memo, while almost everyone ells keeps repeating the same message over and over. The Ranger works very well, most just plain out refuse to believe it.

There aren’t though.

If there were, we would see dozens of rangers right beside the rest of your standard zerg hive mind class collective.

This isn’t some weird “the man is trying to keep us down!” issue. It’s a math issue, we don’t have the proper numbers to dish out in the large scale settings.

I wish we did, as I mostly just zerg hump myself, but we don’t currently.

SafiMoyo.5130:

Castaliea.3156:

-Easier for long term Rangers to change stats. (This applies to every profession as well). I want to see all future Ascended Gear have stats that can be changed out of combat exactly how they hinted Legendary weapons would work. The gear is hard to obtain via time gates/materials and an appropriate reward would obviously be to simply have it be the last armor set your character needs. Then we aren’t carrying around 30 sets of armor, worrying about skill changes or updates, etc. We can be free to experiment and change as we want.

Please please please, please please, please. I play a ranger, and only a ranger, have over a thousand hours logged in, and I’ve used exactly 1 set of armor. (Berserker gear, 6 Runes of the Ranger, berserker backpiece (Fractal Compactor—500 ecto investment, I’m NOT changing this) and prec/toughness/power (prec as main stat) trinkets.) I would LOVE LOVE to try out different builds, and I rearrange my traits every now and then, but getting a full set of armor and ascended trinkets is a ton of work, and costly to store all 12 pieces for one new set.

I hope either legendary armor is relatively easy to obtain (still working towards that legendary since December :/ and I’m unemployed soon to be employed), or ascended gear gets changed to allow for easy stat swapping. I want to try other builds gosh darn it!

I have no idea, how did You get to this point…
I’ve played much less than half of this You are claiming to play – and I have two armor sets on ranger – and yet in the middle time I’ve got fully exo/asended (also two armor sets) a guardian. in weapons I got much more set with mine ranger having 2 different lb, 3 sb, 2 axes with only sigil as a difference, 2 gs, sword and dagger. all those things exotic

and with that I can’t catch what were You doing the whole this time if You only managed to have one set… (anyway when I was considering my stats set I considered berserk set as “useless” one )

This game, more than many others I’ve played, is very easy to collect gear, reroll classes, and respec for a specific scenario. The other players are right, if the Ranger class was as good overall as the select few on this forum imply we’d see more functional use out of them in WvW. We have whole guilds up and reroll guardian and warrior from whatever they were because the current meta of regen warriors and guardians is so overpowered. If Rangers offered something meaningful zergs would take notice.

While I don’t doubt the skills or abilities of players like Chopps and Tribio, etc, I think they’re overstating their overall worth to the zerg or meta. There would be dozens of clones all over the field if it worked as well as they implied.

Atherakhia.4086:

This game, more than many others I’ve played, is very easy to collect gear, reroll classes, and respec for a specific scenario. The other players are right, if the Ranger class was as good overall as the select few on this forum imply we’d see more functional use out of them in WvW. We have whole guilds up and reroll guardian and warrior from whatever they were because the current meta of regen warriors and guardians is so overpowered. If Rangers offered something meaningful zergs would take notice.

While I don’t doubt the skills or abilities of players like Chopps and Tribio, etc, I think they’re overstating their overall worth to the zerg or meta. There would be dozens of clones all over the field if it worked as well as they implied.

This game is built around the idea of being able to respec for an situation you encounter and an overall build diversity. However, In a game built like that there is 14-16, or 22-26(if you also count runes and sigils) equipment slots that effect your overall performance.

Lets assume a single exotic piece costs only, only 2g. That’s bare minimum 28g to fully respec your gear. Minimum. There are also 17 different armor sets. That’s now a minimum of 476g and a completely unrealistic amount of bag space to accommodate having everything you’d need to always play the customize game whenever you wanted or needed to. All of this isn’t even taking sigils or runes into account!

Ascended armor and trinkets being time gated and hard to obtain obviously means a dedication to a select character and that should be rewarded with the ability to run what you want, when you want. Especially so in a game built around that very idea! This is where my previous stand comes from. Not everyone has done 1000 runs of CoF and has silly amounts of gold to spare. Especially so for those people who often adventure into WvW as it’ generally the least lucrative form of play there is. Rewarding a player for dedication and time spent to a particular profession should, by all means, mean he can run any spec, any time, any place. Not simply because he has the gold to do so.

Playing against enemy rangers, I feel that they pretty much cover what the ranger was in GW1. Annoying, tough to kill, and will constantly poke you down at range until you die.

I would say they’re extremely strong for smaller-size skirmishes and roaming, and they’re probably one of the best classes at kiting. They’re also a strong source of mixed damage, due to the nature of their traitlines as well as their class mechanic allowing for two different sources of damage.

If pets and weapons receive some quality-of-life buffs and some traits get condensed or moved to different traitlines, I would definitely consider this an overall strong class, considering that it’s already pretty good at roaming in WvW and is currently strong in SPvP and TPvP.

I would say that for large-scale WvW fights and general PvE, it would be great if Ranger had some additional support options. Shouts are currently unviable for support due to being outclassed by options that several other classes bring, the Ranger brings no blast finishers to the table, and the evasive / defensive nature on his weaponsets are largely selfish, offering little to his allies. The only unique and powerful team utility that a Ranger can offer to his team is a 15/30 uptime water field on his heal. While fairly powerful, I don’t think the one skill is enough to justify taking the class amongst its other weaknesses.

Currently, only spirits can be seen as strong team support options. I’d like to see the ranger’s effective support repertoire to be extended to include more support-oriented pets that are effective outside of attacking and are less vulnerable to AoE spam. Someone mentioned pets that stay out of combat and provide passive buffs to the team, perfect for areas in which pets can easily be demolished through incidental AoE.

Shouts could also benefit. Trait consolidation and a more powerful grandmaster trait would go a long way towards giving us some solid team support. Maybe a traited “protect me” could protect a nearby ally instead of just yourself, or something similar. Regen and swiftness really doesn’t cut it for a grandmaster trait in my opinion.

tl;dr Rangers suffer from their selfish kits and bring little to no team utility to the table, their damage is oftentimes subpar and their condition damage is outclassed. Their niche in being an evasive kiting machine doesn’t benefit large group combat, where utility and synergy is key. If physical projectile finishers were more useful, that might also make their viability jump up.

Castaliea.3156:

There are effective Ranger build yes. But that is not what he means by “dismantle balls”. There are very legitimate reasons as to why Ranger is seldom left out of things. Trying to imply or even outright stating that one PvP build instantly solves a professions problems across all settings and gametypes is plain ignorant.

The spirit build is just the current meta. There are older Ranger builds that use to be the sPvP meta, which still works great in WvW and PvE, where build efficiency is less of a factor. Condition trap builds, bunker builds, hell even power builds works great in WvW and PvE.

Fjandi.2516:

The ranger doesn’t work very well at all. It’s really strong in spvp (some builds), but this doesn’t mean the class is well designed. Take the spirit build everyone is now playing in tpvp, it’s a strong build, expecially in this stupid meta. But can we say it’s a well designed and fun to play build? No. Used to be the same with the bm bunker.

So, the Ranger doesn’t work very well, but there are Ranger builds that are really strong? That doesn’t make any sens at all. If the Ranger has effective builds, there is no reason for other “professions” to talk bad about the Ranger. That’s the point. Why would other players care about how the Ranger is designed?

Fordel.3208:

There aren’t though.

If there were, we would see dozens of rangers right beside the rest of your standard zerg hive mind class collective.

This isn’t some weird “the man is trying to keep us down!” issue. It’s a math issue, we don’t have the proper numbers to dish out in the large scale settings.

I wish we did, as I mostly just zerg hump myself, but we don’t currently.

Allow me to quote myself:

At this point, it doesn’t matter what ArenaNet does with the Ranger, people will just keep saying it’s a bad profession. And that will, in turn, prevent them from learning the advantages of the Ranger. It’s just ironic really.

Kasama.8941:

…builds that use to be the sPvP meta, which still works great in WvW and PvE, where build efficiency is less of a factor.

Nuff said.

Ranger is a hard class to play competatively or even well in a WvW scenario. There are hoards of bow/bow bear/bear rangers running around doing miserably whilst a very small portion of the population (that I’ve observed ofc, I barely see anything else) has cottened on to making use of the ranger’s other weapon and pet combos.

Obviously on the ranger forum i’d expect most of you to be making great use of our axe/greatsword/sword/warhown/torch/dps pets etc. and looking at the builds a few notable rangers have shared that is indeed the case. But sadly for the most case the word hasn’t gotten out. Therefore we get utterly trashed by the community as being a useless pew-pew from miles away, no threat class.

An aggressive, well built Ranger in the hands of an experienced player is very effective. We just need to spread the word to the rest of the ranger community to ditch the bears and at least one bow, then maybe people will start taking us seriously.

Edit: oh and BM/Traps bunker is certainly not the be-all and end-all of the class. There are a lot more viable builds for zerging and roaming out there, I just wish I’d come up against them more. Or ever, to be honest.

Kasama.8941:

So, the Ranger doesn’t work very well, but there are Ranger builds that are really strong? That doesn’t make any sens at all. If the Ranger has effective builds, there is no reason for other “professions” to talk bad about the Ranger. That’s the point. Why would other players care about how the Ranger is designed?

It depends entirely on what you mean by “the ranger works well”. If that means “the class is terribly designed but very strong in tpvp”, ye i agree with you. It’s like a guy who lifts a huge weight with terrible form, he’s strong no doubt, still his form is bad.

our major problem are ppl that are hardly working against our overall opinions – for example mass of jerks going with longbow and longbow only (because why bother to use the swap) in full berserk armor with two bear on swap, thinking that bear will tank all of things for them and then going to for example WvW with something like that, because in cof p1 it makes great – he died only 20 times in a row and not seeing nything wrong about that.

I’ve met massive amount of such people and I think there are bigger problem to rangers opinion than problem if we are usefull as a class or not.

Castaliea.3156:

Kasama.8941:

…builds that use to be the sPvP meta, which still works great in WvW and PvE, where build efficiency is less of a factor.

Nuff said.

Right, so you agree that the Ranger has just as many efficient builds, as most other professions.

Fjandi.2516:

Kasama.8941:

So, the Ranger doesn’t work very well, but there are Ranger builds that are really strong? That doesn’t make any sens at all. If the Ranger has effective builds, there is no reason for other “professions” to talk bad about the Ranger. That’s the point. Why would other players care about how the Ranger is designed?

It depends entirely on what you mean by “the ranger works well”. If that means “the class is terribly designed but very strong in tpvp”, ye i agree with you. It’s like a guy who lifts a huge weight with terrible form, he’s strong no doubt, still his form is bad.

This topic is about the point of view from players, playing other professions. All they should care about, is how efficient the Ranger is when playing. How the Ranger is designed, is only an issue for players who plays a Ranger.

Or said in another way; if you were on the team with that guy who could lift huge weights, why would you care if he was in terrible form? If he shows great results, then you have no reason to question how he got those results.

Kasama.8941:

Castaliea.3156:

Kasama.8941:

…builds that use to be the sPvP meta, which still works great in WvW and PvE, where build efficiency is less of a factor.

Nuff said.

Right, so you agree that the Ranger has just as many efficient builds, as most other professions.

No. I was pointing out how we can dismiss your statements because you assume we’re fine because of sPvP builds and how builds don’t have to actually work as well in WvW.

almost my entire time in gw2 has been dedicated to showing people why the ranger should be valued.

but my issue with some of the “popular” people on these forums is that they dont complain about the profession enough. they dont do research in all aspects of the game, and they end up just bolstering the profession instead of advocating for change as well.

in reality, ranger is bottom of the barrel in organized WvW. getting kinda solid in PVE and decent in spvp (has been for a while). i also play a guard and necro, so i very well know whats up, and where we need to be. the profession has been changing toward the better veeeeery slowly. the problem is, there’s just not enough going on to make the prof competitive in WvW, which is all I play. and I hope devs start looking at the prof from this angle as well, not just at spvp level.

Castaliea.3156:

Kasama.8941:

Castaliea.3156:

Kasama.8941:

…builds that use to be the sPvP meta, which still works great in WvW and PvE, where build efficiency is less of a factor.

Nuff said.

Right, so you agree that the Ranger has just as many efficient builds, as most other professions.

No. I was pointing out how we can dismiss your statements because you assume we’re fine because of sPvP builds and how builds don’t have to actually work as well in WvW.

That’s not what I’m saying at all. More builds work in WvW and PvE, because these game modes doesn’t require as big of an attention to detail, as sPvP does. Or in other words; WvW and PvE aren’t as competitively demanding as sPvP, so therefor more builds become viable. Mobs doesn’t fight as good a players, and small group play aren’t as big of a factor in WvW. Further more, the build structure in WvW and PvE, is very different from sPvP.

The point I was originally trying to make. is that sPvP is more competitive, so the players who plays sPvP will always look for ways to push professions to their most optimal performance, and constantly try to find new efficient builds. Meanwhile, most of the players who play PvE and WvW, will typically be the casual player, who generally has no interest in finding the boundaries of a profession himself, but just wants everything served on a silver platter. So, while the sPvP players keep finding new and interesting Ranger builds, everyone ells keeps repeating that “the Ranger is a bad profession”, even though sPvP players repetitively proofs that it is not the case.

Kasama.8941:

Castaliea.3156:

Kasama.8941:

Castaliea.3156:

Kasama.8941:

…builds that use to be the sPvP meta, which still works great in WvW and PvE, where build efficiency is less of a factor.

Nuff said.

Right, so you agree that the Ranger has just as many efficient builds, as most other professions.

No. I was pointing out how we can dismiss your statements because you assume we’re fine because of sPvP builds and how builds don’t have to actually work as well in WvW.

That’s not what I’m saying at all. More builds work in WvW and PvE, because these game modes doesn’t require as big of an attention to detail, as sPvP does. Or in other words; WvW and PvE aren’t as competitively demanding as sPvP, so therefor more builds become viable. Mobs doesn’t fight as good a players, and small group play aren’t as big of a factor in WvW. Further more, the build structure in WvW and PvE, is very different from sPvP.

The point I was originally trying to make. is that sPvP is more competitive, so the players who plays sPvP will always look for ways to push professions to their most optimal performance, and constantly try to find new efficient builds. Meanwhile, most of the players who play PvE and WvW, will typically be the casual player, who generally has no interest in finding the boundaries of a profession himself, but just wants everything served on a silver platter. So, while the sPvP players keep finding new and interesting Ranger builds, everyone ells keeps repeating that “the Ranger is a bad profession”, even though sPvP players repetitively proofs that it is not the case.

I know exactly what you mean and you’re literally saying builds don’t have to be as good or even functional because WvW doesn’t matter, it’s a lesser game type.

WvW guild recruitment : We are currently open to applications from all professions except rangers.

Kasama.8941:

Castaliea.3156:

Kasama.8941:

Castaliea.3156:

Kasama.8941:

…builds that use to be the sPvP meta, which still works great in WvW and PvE, where build efficiency is less of a factor.

Nuff said.

Right, so you agree that the Ranger has just as many efficient builds, as most other professions.

No. I was pointing out how we can dismiss your statements because you assume we’re fine because of sPvP builds and how builds don’t have to actually work as well in WvW.

That’s not what I’m saying at all. More builds work in WvW and PvE, because these game modes doesn’t require as big of an attention to detail, as sPvP does. Or in other words; WvW and PvE aren’t as competitively demanding as sPvP, so therefor more builds become viable. Mobs doesn’t fight as good a players, and small group play aren’t as big of a factor in WvW. Further more, the build structure in WvW and PvE, is very different from sPvP.

The point I was originally trying to make. is that sPvP is more competitive, so the players who plays sPvP will always look for ways to push professions to their most optimal performance, and constantly try to find new efficient builds. Meanwhile, most of the players who play PvE and WvW, will typically be the casual player, who generally has no interest in finding the boundaries of a profession himself, but just wants everything served on a silver platter. So, while the sPvP players keep finding new and interesting Ranger builds, everyone ells keeps repeating that “the Ranger is a bad profession”, even though sPvP players repetitively proofs that it is not the case.

so you basically saying that spvp players are smarter than WvW/PvE, which I cordially disagree. Same people play spvp and wvw, and some of them are looking to find more effective builds.

The thing is that spvp evolves around one simple thing: bunker that small circle, preferably solo to let your team crash things somewhere else. Ranger profession lacking group utilily and overall “usefulness” – but ranger shines in spvp solo-defending point. Look at our traits lines – they are all about buffing our pet not group, even signet grandmaster trait makes them affect ranger himself not pet. How narrow-minded it is in comparison with other classes’ traits that give aoe boons left and right? We just recently received grandmaster trait that shares aoe swiftness and regen – the ‘weakest’ boons possible.

TLDR: you simply must be blind if you think that ranger is somewhere near ‘okay’ state in group gameplay.