Guild Wars 2

angan.6572:

I’m sorry have you ever played a ranger or are you just trolling ?

Trait and switch ? I used to run a 0/10/30/0/30 build and the pet still gets killed in like 2 seconds everywhere. Dungeons ? 1 AOE and pet is down. WvW ? One AOE in the zerg and the pet is down. Only time the pet stays alive is when you find a 1vs1 duel which doesn’t happen often to me at least… And most of the times you don’t even have the time to react to switch fast enough before the pet gets one shotted.

Although I think pet’s have poor survivability this quote is a ridiculous exaggeration. 1 AoE? Just 1? C’mon, nobody is ever going to take our complaints seriously when they hear stuff like that.

angan.6572:

Dagger great offhand ?? Give me one viable and reasonable explanation to why anyone would run a dagger over a torch or warhorn as offhand weapon.

Dagger #4 has a dodge and #5 has a 3stack bleed and a cripple. That can fit nicely into any build I think. Use dagger and sword and your weapon kits alone would give you 3 dodges. Combine that with lightning reflexes and your 2 dodge rolls per endurance bar and you have 6. That’s incredible. If you combine dagger with the axe kit then you can lay down 8 stacks of bleed and 2 movement impairing effects, great for chasing down high mobility classes.

I think dagger is highly underrated. I don’t understand why people are so impressed with the warhorn. Fury and 1 stack of might? The fury isn’t bad but 1 stack of might? And then 99% of the time they just use it for the speed boost and that’s it. Torch is ok if you have a group that spams blast finishers.

I think dagger is underrated as well, and I feel bad because I’ve disagreed with users of it in the past, but I’ve found myself using it more and more in sPVP and while I miss my axe #5 I can’t live without the cripple and extra dodge (on a stupidly low cooldown) anymore. As well as that the damage is really not that bad, it’s not as high as torch but with a condition build it’s still decent damage output.

It’s comical watching thieves try and immobilise me. I’m most likely using my shortbow so I hit quickshot, you don’t move back but you still gain the evade, jump to melee set and then have another three evades that will all still evade even if you’re immobile and then after all that and I need some ground or I decide for a total retreat I can time the removal of conditions hit Lightening Reflexes and then Hornet Sting, hold my “about face key” and hit Monarch’s Leap, it covers a HUGE amount of ground all of them also evading as they go. It sounds a lot but I’ve got it down to a fine art now, just simple practice, the ground I can cover in retreat is massive.

That’s before you even consider my two normal evades with increased endurance regen and vigor.

Even if the thief catches up to me I don’t care, my cooldowns are so short I just do the whole thing all over again, evading all the way with my regen pumping away. Thieves that can kill me are few and far between.

Although all that said, I’m not suggesting that our ability to retreat means we’re perfectly okay, just that the off hand dagger extra dodge has become a powerful tool for me, even with the large damage output of the torch, which is also a very good off hand.

Maybe if the horn had a CC removal on it’s #5 as well, I’d use it more.

(Ignore bad english, typed on a phone).

I used to be one of the loudest voices to cry for rangers buffs.
While the fixes received within the last few month sure could’ve been a little bit more convincing the Ranger got his spot now.

Rangers are no main damage class, even the commonly accepted cond. build can’t compete with the DPS kings.
But thats not the Rangers’ job!
———————————————————-
With the buffs to /Movemenspeed /Daze-duration /pet reliability Rangers now got their niche.
2 men split.
The control Rangers offer by dazing a target and setting up a pet root/knockdown with their slow is great (+heal reduce).
Paired with a Thief or Warrior they do a great job.

I wouldn’t complain about less cooldown on cripple though, since some class can remove it just by dodging afterwards…

E/:
@Kam
Try pets in Arah or Crucible; pets do die within 1 aoe.

Rangers are great in spvp. There are a number of viable builds you can create and tune to your preference, and in the end it is a class that gets better as you play it in spvp and is capable of being competitive without being gimmicky or overpowered. The changes made to melee pets and GS opened up new options in spvp, and that was an awesome update. The problem is in pve, where the pet mechanic becomes either a frustrating microfest, or just plain impossible. I think in wvw rangers are “fine” but I always feel like only gimmicky tactics really work well, and there are pet issues as well. I agree with what some posters have said, ranger needs to be split for pve and pvp. Most of the issues are just pet mechanics and some trait issues/ a couple util skill fixes. I think that as time goes on, these things will continue to improve and that once pets are at a level where it is not a pain to use them in fractals, the ranger will be in a very good place. Also, I don’t know if I should say this, but even though it looks like F2 is recharging now, you can still use it after swap the same as before.

capuchinseven.8395:

I think dagger is underrated as well, and I feel bad because I’ve disagreed with users of it in the past, but I’ve found myself using it more and more in sPVP and while I miss my axe #5 I can’t live without the cripple and extra dodge (on a stupidly low cooldown) anymore. As well as that the damage is really not that bad, it’s not as high as torch but with a condition build it’s still decent damage output.

It’s comical watching thieves try and immobilise me. I’m most likely using my shortbow so I hit quickshot, you don’t move back but you still gain the evade, jump to melee set and then have another three evades that will all still evade even if you’re immobile and then after all that and I need some ground or I decide for a total retreat I can time the removal of conditions hit Lightening Reflexes and then Hornet Sting, hold my “about face key” and hit Monarch’s Leap, it covers a HUGE amount of ground all of them also evading as they go. It sounds a lot but I’ve got it down to a fine art now, just simple practice, the ground I can cover in retreat is massive.

That’s before you even consider my two normal evades with increased endurance regen and vigor.

Even if the thief catches up to me I don’t care, my cooldowns are so short I just do the whole thing all over again, evading all the way with my regen pumping away. Thieves that can kill me are few and far between.

Although all that said, I’m not suggesting that our ability to retreat means we’re perfectly okay, just that the off hand dagger extra dodge has become a powerful tool for me, even with the large damage output of the torch, which is also a very good off hand.

Maybe if the horn had a CC removal on it’s #5 as well, I’d use it more.

(Ignore bad english, typed on a phone).

If you’re running Lightning/Shortbow/Sword, and want a laugh, get in a fight with someone.

Pop Sword Leap Back, then Lightning, then switch to Bow and do its leap back.

angan.6572:

Ryoki Hokishami.2756:

Really, just stop with this please. Pet is dead 90% of the time? Trait your pet or switch it, it’s really not that hard. Zero control? Give me a break. And dagger bad? Dagger is a great offhand.

I was so happy to see most of this negativity gone from our forum, but stuff like this just brings everyone down and starts arguments.

I’m sorry have you ever played a ranger or are you just trolling ?

Trait and switch ? I used to run a 0/10/30/0/30 build and the pet still gets killed in like 2 seconds everywhere. Dungeons ? 1 AOE and pet is down. WvW ? One AOE in the zerg and the pet is down. Only time the pet stays alive is when you find a 1vs1 duel which doesn’t happen often to me at least… And most of the times you don’t even have the time to react to switch fast enough before the pet gets one shotted.

And look your dps output when the pet is dead. Is simply laughable.

Dagger great offhand ?? Give me one viable and reasonable explanation to why anyone would run a dagger over a torch or warhorn as offhand weapon.

Not gonna lie though. I hope the trap build gets nerfed and see some buffs to range weapons and pet fixes. Because is ridiculous and idiotic to be a “ranger” and be forced to go melee in order to achieve decent damage while the Warrior class who supposingly is stronger in mellee form makes way more damage and utility with bows.

Like i said, i’m not denying that the ranger is better than it was before due to some fixes, but not let get blindfolded and jump on the bandwagon “OMG ranger is so strong, ranger so perfect” . Ranger has ONLY 1 viable build a.k.a trapper. Anything else just makes you a moving frag.

Really, because two things, I never agreed that ranger was “so powerful, so perfect”, I never said it, actually. And trapper is not the ONLY viable build.

Ryoki Hokishami.2756:

Really, because two things, I never agreed that ranger was “so powerful, so perfect”, I never said it, actually. And trapper is not the ONLY viable build.

Is the only competitive build though.

It really depends on what you want out of the class, where you play the class and how you play the class.

Let me qualify by saying you could want something the class is supposed to provide and still not get it, I’m not saying all disappointed people want things the class isn’t supposed to do (archer with no pet). Some people want a rewarding, immersive, fun and diverse pet class, given the limitations in pet viability, the limitations in interactions with the pet, the limitations in pet survivability and the limitations in pet responsiveness and you can easily see how these people are disappointed. People who want it to be the pet class are disappointed with how it turned out.

If you play the class in sPvP and you run the right builds it can perform great. Bunker ranger and trap ranger are both decent builds and people have had success with them. The former is one of the best ranger builds and it’s still inferior to other classes. The latter is a strong build, but it’s also a very niche build and it’s very specific to a certain kind of play. Trap rangers aren’t as useful in dungeons, they are viable but a lot of rangers would get far more mileage from a different build. In sPvP if you bring a straight up DPS build which focuses on your weapon skills you will probably be disappointed.

Every class is viable in dungeons, although the balance difference among them (and among their different builds) is considerable. Rangers don’t have easy access to skills like Wall of Reflection or Feedback, they don’t do the crazy DPS warriors do, they don’t have shout builds like warriors and guardians and their support options are mostly garbage (do you ever see spirits anywhere?). Then you get to pets. Of every class (I have five level 80s) the pet is by far the most dramatic underperformer in dungeons in the game. By a massive margin. Not only are the often a huge liability (stealth movement and tactics, triggering traps and blossoms, increasing your aggro radius because of their spastic revolving AI and they get targeted by boss skills, so if they are by you and you fail to dodge – or you dodge but into your pets AoE circle – you get hit), they are incredibly difficult to get value out of. Too often they are dead, often unavoidable. Instead of playing to get the most out of your class mechanic, the ranger plays to keep it’s class mechanic alive. Often that means refusing to use most melee pets (which is most pets and severely limits the build choices you have) and blowing resources to keep the pet alive (whether it be a dodge for protection, pet swap to get it out of an AoE etc). Guardians don’t have that problem with virtues, warriors don’t with adrenaline, elementalists don’t with attunements. Can you imagine if through no fault of their own, guardians could lose access to all their virtues for 40 seconds? Elementalists couldn’t swap attunements for 40 seconds? The even crazier thing is, while all classes have a trait line that tailors to their class mechanic, the ranger is the only one which is entirely about the class mechanic. Traits from the arcane line will help the elementalist even if they don’t swap attunements, ever single ranger trait and skill in the beast mastery line is void until the pet is revived. All you get from it is healing power. I could go on an on, but a lot of rangers are seriously let down by pets in high performance scenarios. Even with skilled gameplay, pets aren’t as rewarding as other class mechanics and they are highly unreliable the more challenging content becomes. General PvE is fine, but general PvE is faceroll easy. In WvW pets have similair problems to dungeons, especially with the current zerg meta and attacking the nearest target which is almost always a pet.

If you run cleric’s armour (a popular set for rangers with pet builds) you might think pets perform really well. Players who run berserkers builds with DPS focused traits (marksmanship, skirmishing, maybe 10 or 15 points in beastmastery) will find the pet doesn’t perform at all and the rest of their build under performs because sacrifices made for a pet which spends most of its time dead.

People who say the class is fine are almost always talking about specific situations, specific builds and specific areas of the game. The pet mechanic is still broken in high performance gameplay. It’s not simply an AI issue, it’s an aggro issue (especially with group stealth, or even stealth kits), it’s an issue where they won’t hit certain objects (like the Elemental in Snowblind fractal), it’s an issue where even if you do some crazy awesome dodge rolls to stay alive, the pet doesn’t and will simply die (lots of boss fights), it’s an issue where pets… well you see where I’m going with this.

You can perform well with the class, but rangers have the most broken class mechanic in the game and while some arenas and some builds don’t show it, the ones most rangers are running do show it. It’s not because they built wrong, it’s because the base performance value of the pet is below an acceptable level for a class mechanic and the AI component doesn’t have certain allowances (such as AoE damage reduction) to make up for it’s shortcomings in high performance situations. Build diversity also sucks and support rangers are probably the worst support builds in the game.

angan.6572:

Ryoki Hokishami.2756:

Really, because two things, I never agreed that ranger was “so powerful, so perfect”, I never said it, actually. And trapper is not the ONLY viable build.

Is the only competitive build though.

I don’t agree with that, I would agree that condition damage is a very good stat for us but trapper is not our only competitive build.

I love the Ranger, but on my Mesmer I can take on 4 people, down a few (or sometimes all) and survive. On my Ranger I can’t come close to this unless they suck.