Guild Wars 2

Whenever I’m in WVW, I see TONS for rangers (algong with warriors), but I just wanted to know what’s so special about this class? I heard that their damage output is meh, so I just wanted to know.

Rangers are fun! I have a thief guardian and ranger at level 80, but for some reason I play my ranger more than the others.

Power Rangers seem to be very common though.

Rangers are one of the easiest classes to master, and anybody who has played MMOs for a long time knows fairly well that having an extra body on the field tends to help you out.

Rangers Have always been the second most created class. Imo Ranger are the hardest class to play well that is why I have stuck with a ranger for so long. Some say rangers (power longbow) are broken which I have to agree with. Its the only class that another other class can potentially defeat 1 to an infinite number on rangers with a simple reflect skill.

Rangers are a great single target class but are really behind other classes when it comes to power and condition aoe damage. It lacks some of the inherent defenses most of they other class have. while we can emulate some of these defenses: we do so on a very limited bases and unsually at a great cost to offense.

Those of use who have played been here long enough to see the ebb and flow of ranger prowest know that at this time we are not at our strongest yet were are more accepted.

Long live the Ranger Core!

I’ve always played Hunters/Archers in previous MMOs, so I continued the trend in GW2

Because for the first time since launch like 3 years ago there are finally a few viable ranger builds. Ranger has always been the hands down worst class with worst class mechanic for every aspect of the game. The class mechanic is still the worst and alot of the traits are still awful and dont deserve to be as high up the trait line as they are. After 3 years of complaining though they have finally fixed some small things that killed the ranger and given them proper buffs so now a few builds are actually viable.

Because ranger/hunter/archer is one of the most popular archetypes in every mmo. GW2 is no exception.

There are actually alot more thieves in WvW.
You just can’t see them.

SpiritSpeakerOfHoelbrak.3980:

Keegan.4172:

Whenever I’m in WVW, I see TONS for rangers (algong with warriors), but I just wanted to know what’s so special about this class? I heard that their damage output is meh, so I just wanted to know.

Hi Keegan,

They are easy to play and you can spam from 1500 range without having to engage your enemy. Due to the low skill cap,this type of play attracts allot of people in WvW.

I rolled one myself in WvW and discovered just how broken they are ( and easy with cheese ).

I made a thread about how LongBow rangers are broken here:-

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Longbow-Rangers-are-Broken/first#post4812295

Best regards

Probably just another troll, but I’ll gladly duel your “op” lb ranger with a melee ranger (and beat you, of course) if that would end your nonsense.

cafard.8953:

Because ranger/hunter/archer is one of the most popular archetypes in every mmo. GW2 is no exception.

This.

Got nothign to do with how good we are, or how fun it is to play. All the classes are a lot of fun depending what you want to do, and most people concider Rangers to be fairly weak as a class (rightly or wrongly).

People just like archers.

Keegan.4172:

Whenever I’m in WVW, I see TONS for rangers (algong with warriors), but I just wanted to know what’s so special about this class? I heard that their damage output is meh, so I just wanted to know.

Rangers have been the most played class in gw2 since release

Cufufalating.8479:

People just like archers.

This plus more. For example I had exactly zero interest in playing an archer. Then I tried ranger, and found out they have the best melee skills in the game. BOTH swords are more fun than any other class except possibly thief. Really amazing design on both those weapons, especially the 1-hander.

Dead Muppet.9718:

Keegan.4172:

Whenever I’m in WVW, I see TONS for rangers (algong with warriors), but I just wanted to know what’s so special about this class? I heard that their damage output is meh, so I just wanted to know.

Rangers have been the most played class in gw2 since release

wrong. official Anet metrics say warrior is the most created (thus used) and ranger is a close second.

I’m pretty terrible at melee, distance is my friend. So ranger is one of my first chars to go into WvW, and it still is one of my favorites.

You see so many rangers because you want to see them. I see a many more guardians and eles but that is maybe just me.

Rangers are the most fun class to play because of the promise of it can get better. The mechanism of the class seems promising you can play safe from distance and get close as soon as you desire keeping efectivines en both cases.
WRONG. It is not a problem of learn 2 play (L2P) most of the skills and traits are broken or useless.
That’s being said. The class is still the most fun in pve and wvw. Although if you go for the win (to dont die a lot in wvw or speed runs) just choose another one.
Also is the easiest class to begin with, the distance of the bow make it so. But the most difficult to play against other players or actually some enemy AI (silver wastes for example) . The rest of the game is dead easy, you only need the bear to bring all the aggro for itself while you pewpew with your bow from 1800 units. And that’s why bearbows exist.

anduriell.6280:

Rangers are the most fun class to play because of the promise of it can get better. The mechanism of the class seems promising you can play safe from distance and get close as soon as you desire keeping efectivines en both cases.
WRONG. It is not a problem of learn 2 play (L2P) most of the skills and traits are broken or useless.
That’s being said. The class is still the most fun in pve and wvw. Although if you go for the win (to dont die a lot in wvw […]

The best LB rangers you’ll fight are actually those who are mastering the other set of weapon(s), basically GS or S/D. That’s why they are dangerous, because they are “effective” in both ranged/closed combat.

After a year, anet release some statistics and ranger was the 2nd most created class, right behind warrior.

SpiritSpeakerOfHoelbrak.3980:

Keegan.4172:

Whenever I’m in WVW, I see TONS for rangers (algong with warriors), but I just wanted to know what’s so special about this class? I heard that their damage output is meh, so I just wanted to know.

Hi Keegan,

They are easy to play and you can spam from 1500 range without having to engage your enemy. Due to the low skill cap,this type of play attracts allot of people in WvW.

I rolled one myself in WvW and discovered just how broken they are ( and easy with cheese ).

I made a thread about how LongBow rangers are broken here:-

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Longbow-Rangers-are-Broken/first#post4812295

Best regards

and any half competent player can deal with them no problem, how about you keep you pathetic whining in the thread you made and have already been proved wrong in. Oh wait it got closed
lel
But OP theres a bunch for quite a few reasons. Part of it being Rangers for the most part have been in a pretty bad spot for the past 2 years aside from a build or 2 but since the September patch we’ve been much more viable. Bows were trash, we had to use an entire trait line just to be able to use signets to their fullest etc. The September patch helped immensely but we still aren’t top tier in alot of situations. Also what people fail to realize about the longbow is the damage has always been possible but traits like read the wind helped it greatly. Without this trait you might as well not even use a lb past 1200 because you can literally walk to the side and they will miss you. People are just upset we aren’t walking loot bags anymore and instead of taking the time to learn how to counter us they go and whine and cry nerf. Also anyone can play a lb ranger but very few people can play them well enough to be effective at all ranges, most just get slaughtered soon as the gap is closed.

Prysin.8542:

Dead Muppet.9718:

Keegan.4172:

Whenever I’m in WVW, I see TONS for rangers (algong with warriors), but I just wanted to know what’s so special about this class? I heard that their damage output is meh, so I just wanted to know.

Rangers have been the most played class in gw2 since release

wrong. official Anet metrics say warrior is the most created (thus used) and ranger is a close second.

Not sure that most created correlates with most used. Like I can create 4 warriors and 1 ranger on my account and only play my ranger.

I don’t doubt Ranger is most used since launch…there was a reason we were reported on sight for a while as botbows ran rampant.

Cuz they’re awesome, duh.

Keegan.4172:

Whenever I’m in WVW, I see TONS for rangers (algong with warriors), but I just wanted to know what’s so special about this class? I heard that their damage output is meh, so I just wanted to know.

The same reason why you saw sooooo many thieves before the stealth nerf (revealed)..
No skill needed, spam some buttons, kill the opponent..

The main reason I have shelved my ranger for the time being.. Nothing cool about a class that even a brain dead monkey can play (and yeah, I was (and still am a bit) an avid ranger lover)..

A brain dead monkey would have better argument skills.

borya.2964:

A brain dead monkey would have better argument skills.

Wow, good argumenting there..

So tell me, what exactly struck you with that argument? Do you feel personally offended for some weird reason or so?
Or are you claiming that the learning curve of rangers has increased even more than it used to be in the beginning?

To elaborate my statement: Ranger felt awesome for me when everyone was complaining about it, since it wasn’t viable blah blah blah.. And I loved playing it, just to show you all that it IS viable.. Stomping a player in WvW (probably one of those complaining on the forums about how crap rangers were) never felt so rewarding..
But now that they have buffed the ranger weapon wise (while we actually needed some decent utilities instead), the learning curve is absent! Winning a fight now as a ranger has nothing to do with skill (there are good rangers out there, I know), just make sure your LB burst is ready and hitting (applicable to 80% of the rangers that were created during the last 2 months or so)..

Here, a quote for you:

A brain dead monkey would have better argument skills.

#nuffsaid

EDIT: formatting

Tribio.8531:

borya.2964:

A brain dead monkey would have better argument skills.

Wow, good argumenting there..

[…]

To elaborate my statement: […]

Worked as intended. See, it’s not that hard.

Tribio.8531:

Keegan.4172:

Whenever I’m in WVW, I see TONS for rangers (algong with warriors), but I just wanted to know what’s so special about this class? I heard that their damage output is meh, so I just wanted to know.

The same reason why you saw sooooo many thieves before the stealth nerf (revealed)..
No skill needed, spam some buttons, kill the opponent..

The main reason I have shelved my ranger for the time being.. Nothing cool about a class that even a brain dead monkey can play (and yeah, I was (and still am a bit) an avid ranger lover)..

I think the statement that offends people is this “No skill needed, spam some buttons, kill the opponent” followed by the ranger stuff. Doesnt the no skill needed etc statement apply to all the metabuilds? (im not really sure, since i avoid “metabuilds”)

I dont see how you can play another class just because you feel a braindead monkey can play ranger. I mean you can create any class go to a website with the metas and then learn what buttons to mash. Any class can randomly hit buttons and kill an opponent. The thing with rangers is that they are at range and for whatever reason that just freaks people out (same with stealth) so that they just stand there and stare at a wall or w/e people do when they get hit by rapid fire.

Gobble D Goop.4081:

I think the statement that offends people is this “No skill needed, spam some buttons, kill the opponent” followed by the ranger stuff.

Never any offence meant to a good ranger..

Doesnt the no skill needed etc statement apply to all the metabuilds? (im not really sure, since i avoid “metabuilds”)

For disambiguation purposes: Metabuilds are – in my opinion – working setups.. However, some metabuilds require a lot more player skill than other..

Gobble D Goop.4081:

I dont see how you can play another class just because you feel a braindead monkey can play ranger. I mean you can create any class go to a website with the metas and then learn what buttons to mash. Any class can randomly hit buttons and kill an opponent. The thing with rangers is that they are at range and for whatever reason that just freaks people out (same with stealth) so that they just stand there and stare at a wall or w/e people do when they get hit by rapid fire.

That kind of depends on what exactly one is looking for when playing a game.. I personally would rather show some decent playing skills, knowing that at the end of the fight it was either a mistake I made or excellent play from me (and/or my opponent, always with 2 in player fights).

I used to have that feeling when stomping with my ranger (since everyone used to QQ about rangers being worthless, …).
However, now that the ranger isn’t “worthless” to most (for me it was never worthless), you see an enormous increase in rangers in WvW..
The moment ranger gets nerfed into oblivion and everyone starts QQ’ing, I’ll get it back from the shelf.. ;-)
I don’t wanna be carried by my profession

Also, rangers have had access to Longbow since launch, but somehow the QQ about LB rangers has increased a lot during the last months.. So it was also in the past that the ranger could do his/her mayhem from range, but somehow that was not a problem at that time..

Same why thieves are at the moment also no longer considered being so OP: The revealed-nerf has impacted players, so you’ll need to have some player skills in order to get out of the fight as victor..

I don’t know why people assume rangers are the"easiest"class to learn. I see tons of terrible rangers, and, yes, it’s easy to become that low-skill Ranger. But, as a player with only a Ranger character, I feel I have a much higher skill and pose an incredibly higher threat to other s.

With 1500 range, you can just ‘stay away from battle’ but auto attack, and even have your pet, without knowing it, prevent damage, by distracting mobs. That’s how most casual rangers seems to play. No offence meant of course, but I understand this choice as ‘easiest profession to play’ for that very reason.

In wvw rangers used to be rare (especially power). Now with Longbow buff, they are tempting again for a lot of people, cause they act like snipers now.

I like ranger for a lot of reasons, but I think it has a few issues. While their heals are strong, other professions have more efficient heal over time (or bonus effects by the healing skills), stunbreakers is a bit of issue, except in survival skill build, and ranger lacks aoe skills. I mean they are there, like traps, and barrage, but way lower quantity then say elementalist.

Axe is nice, but auto attack is just to slow. They should improve it, otherwise quite potential weapon. Offhand axe is not threatening enough (nr 4 is nice though, but alone doesn’t make it a viable choice imo).

since they have been buffed, longbow rangers bring an appropriate amount of single target burst from long distance to bring down back row eles and necros that run full zerker in zerg and gvg scenerios.

Couple that with what others have said about it being a popular archtype, more and more people are feeling justified bringing it into competitive wvw scenarios.

Tribio.8531:

Never any offence meant to a good ranger..

It’s not about offence but “savoir vivre”. You can’t come on the ranger forum to say that ranger is a kittened class wich requieres no skills. I think you get it.

[Matthew McConaugheyMod/on] We are all freaking brain dead monkeys. [Matthew McConaugheyMod/off]

you can dress up the facts anyway you want, but when you come down to it: A average/poorly played ranger can easily kill an average/poorly played any other class. Also to this point, a ranger excels solo: you don’t need coordination of your team to kill (for the most part) against average folks or pve mobs.

Since most of the population base falls in the ‘average’ category, thats why you see rangers listed as ‘easy mode’. That is also why you do not see many rangers in the high level teams as well. As good+ players wreck them.

And going back to the port that said one reflect destroys them (lb rangers), that proves my point: the average level player sticks to LB like glue, and when in melee range waits for PBS to come off CD (or entangle). A good ranger swaps to s/d or gs, which reflect doesnt do anything for. Unfortunately, a large majority of the ranger player base just spams RF, pbs and occasionally the stealth shot. Most dont even swap pets..

mulzi.8273:

you can dress up the facts anyway you want, but when you come down to it: A average/poorly played ranger can easily kill an average/poorly played any other class. Also to this point, a ranger excels solo: you don’t need coordination of your team to kill (for the most part) against average folks or pve mobs.

Since most of the population base falls in the ‘average’ category, thats why you see rangers listed as ‘easy mode’. That is also why you do not see many rangers in the high level teams as well. As good+ players wreck them.

And going back to the port that said one reflect destroys them (lb rangers), that proves my point: the average level player sticks to LB like glue, and when in melee range waits for PBS to come off CD (or entangle). A good ranger swaps to s/d or gs, which reflect doesnt do anything for. Unfortunately, a large majority of the ranger player base just spams RF, pbs and occasionally the stealth shot. Most dont even swap pets..

So your argument is that a ranger can wreck a bad player but it stops being easy mode when facing a good player….

Ok I’ve found some ridicilous statements and I’ll just say it now, yes I’m offended by rangers being easy and cheezy class.

I have all 8 classes on 8 and am very good with most of them (-engi and -ele which I don’t play anymore nowdays).

To say a class is easy to play and all you have to do is spamm buttons that’s a wrong statement.

In dungeons, most classes do highest DPS on auto attack rotation:

Guardian, Warrior, Ranger, Necromancer, Elementalist, Mesmer
(And NO! Warrior doesn’t do highest DPS with GS HB, it just gives fancy numbers)

So basing a statement that a class is easy based on skills you have to press is pure dumb.

Legend:
RAO – Rampage as one (Elite)
SotW – Signet of the Wild
QZ – Quickening Zephyr
LB – Longbow
A – Axe
AA – Auto attack
S – Sword
GS – Greatsword

PvE content first

Ranger’s main rotation for dungeons:

RAO -> LB5 -> SotW + QZ -> LB2 -> Swap to S/A -> A4 -> Proceed with S AA chain until the opponent dies

Simuntaniously you must control your pet which you should of course keep on defensive so it doesn’t agro mobs (Reason why many people dislike rangers is pets agroing unnecessary/unwanted enemies – this doesn’t happen while pet is on defensive! Not even if the whole team is in stealth and the pet isn’t, it will not agro mobs).

After you do your rotation to the point where you just continue with AA chain, comes the hardest part of the ranger and it’s what makes difference between a good ranger and a very experienced ranger (This is past the point when a ranger knows to adapt weapons and utilities properly) – it’s breaking the AA chain without DPS loss in order to evade attacks, pick up conjures or rez an ally.

PvP content

For PvP there really isn’t any standard rotation. A good ranger knows how to adapt to the situation and the enemy he’s facing.

Usually, most noob rangers will engage with LB2 and then go LB5, rooting themselves – giving opponent the time to come close and nuke them down.

Someone also said a ranger is useless in higher-skilled PvP parties because it’s easy to counter. That is untrue on many levels. I’ve watched plenty of PvP matches and many times there was a ranger on the team – be it for spirits or power ranger.

A power ranger is really really good at countering other power classes like power necro and thief in solo situations and in group fights it can do an ENORMOUS AOE BURST which usually downs any zerker fighting on point.

Common weapons used in PvP:

LB+GS (If you’re really good with sword, you can do with S/D)

To answer OP question now, why you’re seeing so many rangers in WvW lately:

Ranger is a class that is really easy to get hands on. You grab your bear which you send in to attack the enemy and cleanse your conditions while you shoot at the enemy from a safe distance.

Most rangers you’ll ever come across are noobs and I’ll never stand down from this statement.

How to spot a noob ranger:

Uses longbow to attack, uses shortbow as panic weapon or a greatsword as an alternative escape weapon – not knowing that greatsword on ranger is one of if not the best counter melee weapon in the game right now.

How to spot a good ranger:

Uses meta weapons (PvE – S/A + LB, PvP/WvW – GS or S/D + LB), SotW, Grey wolf, Spider, Krytan hound, Jungle stalker, Jaguar.

That said, these are things you can spot instantly on a ranger without being in combat or asking him to ping stuff.

Also, this does not make that specific player a good ranger, it’s just somewhat a base line on which you can judge whether to keep that ranger in your dungeon party or not etc.

If the ranger is really good, you’ll notice superior DPS to one you’d get in a 3war parties.

Drawing a conclusion now;

Ranger as a class was hated for 2 years straight in PvE content and it still is by some players although times are getting better.

It is hands down one of easier classes to start with – along with Warrior and Necromancer – but it is a very hard class to master.

With the ranger, it’s all about timing, positioning and knowing your opponents or in other words, being aware of the situation you’re facing.

So please, don’t ruin what ranger has become. It’s one of my favorite classes and I was unable to efficiently play it due to clkittene, don’t spoil it.

And for the record OP:
“I heard that their damage output is meh”

Ranger’s DPS is 4th best DPS when played as it should be (that is not spamming LB AA etc.)

DPS rankings are following: Thief – Ele – Engi – Ranger – Guardian+Warrior – Necro – Mesmer

So please, don’t talk nonsense ^^