Guild Wars 2

Legit question. Is it because of noob bearbows?

The hate’s been real for longer, but for different reasons. Now it’s mostly because, for a while after LB recieved its buffs, a lot of people rolled to Ranger as flavor of the month class, playing the glassy read the wind build without really knowing how to play the glass itself. The build provided easy ranged burst vs other noobs who, instead of adapting to this new meta build and learning how to counter it, took the forums, whining for nerfs instead.

Before that I believe it was because ranger was just weaker compared to other classes in a lot of areas for a long time, making them an unfavorable class to bring for “hardcore” groups. I don’t recall when that stopped being a thing (or if it even ever stopped), but it’s hard to shake a rep like that.

Dragonfeu.4356:

Legit question. Is it because of noob bearbows?

Yes.

To develop a little, I think the ranger hate comes from two factors:

- Most rangers in spvp are total noobs. I’m scared every time I have one on my team. For one excellent condi survival ranger, I get at least 10 silly LB power rangers who completely ignore their other weapon set and get eaten by thieves cause they don’t know what to do once they are in melee range.

- Even when the ranger is good, it’s still infuriating to get killed at long range in one second, if you are already engaged in a fight.

- I like to play ranger from time to time, but for me and a lot of players, a ranged profession is in itself annoying. Don’t you just hate the sound of the SB AA and the Rapid Fire? Pew pew pew pew. But then again, it’s more of a personal problem. I can’t play elementalist because of the weird sound effects.

Bow/Hunter/Ranger classes are hated in general. Nothing special out there, go take a look at us WoW forums.

Thx guise :>

The rage is compounded by the fact that rangers are one of — if not the best — skirmishing classes, so despite people considering us wastes of spots for 2 years, we would wind up easily killing people in small scale fights, which produced some cognitive dissonance. “Stupid ranger that can’t kill anything and is stupid just kicked the hell out of me.”

The rage is compounded by the fact that rangers are one of — if not the best — skirmishing classes, so despite people considering us wastes of spots for 2 years, we would wind up easily killing people in small scale fights, which produced some cognitive dissonance. “Stupid ranger that can’t kill anything and is stupid just kicked the hell out of me.”

Keep an eye on the chat box when people post screenshots or videos of skilled rangers. It usually gets hysterically ugly.

Probably the longbow of death. Few things end a fight faster than zerk spec rapid fire against someone already under pressure. Ranger is a hard add to compensate for.

Since the release of the game, the Ranger has had bugs and issues. Now the moment the class gets a boost to previously pathetic skills everyone hates them.
But the perma-stealth and vanishing in front of eyeshot of players by the Thief is completely acceptable.

Sorel.4870:

To develop a little, I think the ranger hate comes from two factors:

- Most rangers in spvp are total noobs. I’m scared every time I have one on my team. For one excellent condi survival ranger, I get at least 10 silly LB power rangers who completely ignore their other weapon set and get eaten by thieves cause they don’t know what to do once they are in melee range.

- Even when the ranger is good, it’s still infuriating to get killed at long range in one second, if you are already engaged in a fight.

- I like to play ranger from time to time, but for me and a lot of players, a ranged profession is in itself annoying. Don’t you just hate the sound of the SB AA and the Rapid Fire? Pew pew pew pew. But then again, it’s more of a personal problem. I can’t play elementalist because of the weird sound effects.

Yup – range class always gets hate. I remember the hate when I played my Runi in DaOC. Talking about range….

It’s not ranged classes get hate. No one hates Eles or Mesmers. No one hated Mages or Warlocks in WoW. It’s the pet. Having a pet makes leveling quite easy regardless of how the Ranger plays (and lets be honest… a lot of Rangers made one specifically to pew pew) so a player never really learns how to play until they’re at max level at which point the learning curve is quite steep to be trying to figure out how to play a class properly and competetively.

Now as for the hate… GW2 has a DPS handicap for ranged classes. On top of this, they have a DPS handicap for the pet. Since most players made Rangers to play ranged, and most players found little/no reason to use any other pet than bear while leveling, most players are using a Longbow and a Bear and expecting them to work at 80 in dungeons, Wvw, and PvP. It doesn’t.

The class is also not wanted because a lot of people know how poorly implemented pets are in this game. A lot of classes have access to kittenty AI elements just like the Ranger’s pet. When the majority of the class’s group utility is tied to this kittenty AI element that most players are familiar with, they don’t want the class around.

The last issue is the class doesn’t have a real niche to fill. Overtime the few things the class did excel at have been taken over by other classes (because they do it better with none of the tradeoffs the Ranger has to make) or they were nerfed with little/no compensation elsehwere. This is why the class isn’t attractive in competetive WvW and PvP.

So the hate is justified and both the players and the class are at fault. But the class still has a niche or 2 to fill… the question is if/when this niche will ever be valuable.

IMO of course.

Been playing this game for some time, running dungeons daily. Number of meta rangers joined my party: 3.

1k hours, and only 3 rangers I came across knew how to play their class.

Figure it out yourself!

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Been playing this game for some time, running dungeons daily. Number of meta rangers joined my party: 3.

1k hours, and only 3 rangers I came across knew how to play their class.

Figure it out yourself!

Basically this.

As I’ve stated repeatedly in the past, Ranger has 2 layers of learning. Most professions are either easy or hard. Ranger is easy but also hard. You can pick it up and do fine with it but there’s a second layer you have to discover to truly be effective with it. Most players never discover that second layer and are perpetually stuck in an uphill battle to understand the profession. There’s more to it than pew pew or evade evade. It’s a very viable, powerful profession but unfortunately most people assume it’s not because most people haven’t/don’t or won’t take the time to truly explore it.

I’ve put nearly 2k hours in to mine and any time I do a dungeon people say “wow, a good Ranger” or “omg a Ranger that knows what to do!” And any time I roam in WvW I have no trouble skirmishing with people even in situations where I’m outnumbered.

IMO, the hate comes from people not understanding the profession. The frustration of thinking they know how it works but doubting themselves when a good one wipes the floor with them or when they try to play it well and can’t.

Lots of people pick it up and think “hey this is easy, why are so many Rangers bad, I’m doing pretty well” just because they can pop some high numbers with Rapid Fire. I got news for ya though.. There are lots of combo’s and other mechanics those people will probably never learn about because they’re too satisfied with AFK bursting from max range or spamming Maul if they have enough of a brain to weapon swap.

Rym.1469:

Bow/Hunter/Ranger classes are hated in general. Nothing special out there, go take a look at us WoW forums.

Hunters in WoW have always been hated because they required a very unique counterplay that was different against any other class.
And it was to get under his feet and stay as close to him as possible (if you wanted to stay safe). Which sounded like a braindead idea – and people didn’t do it – so they usually lost to a class that was the weakest in WotLK & Cata datadisks and called it faceroll (Vanilla and TBC used lots of AutoAttacks as damage source. Also, most of the damage came from pets, you just had to run).
Also, Hunters in vanilla were supposed to “pull” the mob fights, and every single hunter wanted to do it, even though they literally sucked at it. Not to mention they draw aggro from the tank, feigned death and boss killed healers 1st.

The reason for hate to Rangers is absolutely different than their fellow class – Hunters.

Rangers are hated because of Bear Bows – which is literally a comfortable way to play a useless class, and also because of Rangers that can’t calm their urge to hit the freaking *4 (Point Blank Shot) that makes elites go far away from the Hit-Range, often wasting most vital or damage dealing abilities.

A poorly managed ranger is truly the worst. Pets that grow out of control in conjunction with the already poor AI, bad positioning, not moving at all, and spamming skills off cooldown such as knockbacks is gonna annoy people and it looks very apparent. While certainly anyone can do this, it’s easier for people of other classes to faceroll the keyboard and look useful. Oh my, that 222222 thief sure looks like he’s doing lots of damage! But at the very least he doesn’t have a pet that draws aggro or something.

The other reason is of course, mindless propaganda, where if you repeat something enough times it becomes true much like how people look at the damage numbers from hundred blades and are like “zomg big numbers = damage”

Meh, you can build any class poorly. There’s no specific way to play Ranger and if you want to run LB/GS the entire time than good for you, do w.e you want. Ignore anyone who tells you how to play your class, especially if what you’re doing is working and you enjoy it.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

As I’ve stated repeatedly in the past, Ranger has 2 layers of learning. Most professions are either easy or hard. Ranger is easy but also hard. You can pick it up and do fine with it but there’s a second layer you have to discover to truly be effective with it. Most players never discover that second layer and are perpetually stuck in an uphill battle to understand the profession. There’s more to it than pew pew or evade evade. It’s a very viable, powerful profession but unfortunately most people assume it’s not because most people haven’t/don’t or won’t take the time to truly explore it.

this is very true of this classes common counterparts in other games.

and ranged clkittene comes from noobs who cant get in close and work them. it also comes from the standard noob desire to pick that type of class, much like a warrior type class. both are noob/lazy heavy classes to pick.

personally i love the ranger, its fun to play. each weapon is very different from the others. i would gladly give up the pet for a slight buff in base damage and toughness and/or vitality. alot of rangers i have run into do not make good use of their pet either.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Been playing this game for some time, running dungeons daily. Number of meta rangers joined my party: 3.

1k hours, and only 3 rangers I came across knew how to play their class.

Figure it out yourself!

I love playing with rangers. Especially in dungeons – for their “spotter” trait, frost spirit, and range of party wide buffs provided by pets. The pug rangers I’ve played with over the past year have been largely competent with both range and melee for their class. Ranger’s sword skills (especially coupled with quickening zephyr) do amazing damage! They stack a lot of vuln too!

These “bad” rangers that join your party, maybe they’re just new? Give them a few pointers, at least that’s what I would do if I ran into one.

I don’t really think of it as hate exactly, so much as general disrespect for the class. I suppose some might call it the same thing.

for PvP, WvW:

-the original team Spirit builds
-the original BM builds where the pet hit really hard
-and now, Longbow builds.

we have a history of having successful, passive play style builds. People don’t like loosing against passive builds.

People also don’t like loosing against AI.

For PvE:

-Bearbows. No skills, with the I play how I want to mentality, seriously damaged our dungeon reputation. A terribly played Warrior could be forgiven because they were just stupidly OP, but not a Bearbow.
-Pets dead all the time, missing moving targets (also a WvW issue), unless you have good pet management skills, and lets face it, few do.
-previously low DPS (especially if pet is dead, and often was before pet health buff), and team support, relative to top dungeon classes, established the dungeon “meta” early on.

combine it all with a history of the pet system just plain sucking for the longest time, and still has various issues both in performance and design, and you get our current reputation.

We hate rangers because bear bow, because they can’t dodge, they can’t use frost spirit, when we are stacking to quick down a boss, hes always miles away pew pewing and making the boss move away from our reflections and because they constant pew pew rapid fire on reflecting enemies..

hate bear bow so much…

Well.. as a previous huntard of another era and game I’d like to have the concept of rangerdom still as mystery. I mean, easy to play, hard to master.

I had my bearbow times… “No my Arnold tanks and me skill 2 makes sooo much damage”

Untill I learned go Brazilian

After the wax all was so different. The sword? Why? Blasting with horn? But…

Jokes aside for a moment. But still, in my opinion the this class is the: L2P

For PvE – Everything but bearbow. The ranger should check what the other players provide, meaning sometimes sporting a fire field, axe reflection, gs block, what not – you think them dumm warriors think about these? Hah!

For WvW – Most say theyre useless – Sure, in a blob perhaps, but if specced right rangers are nasty roamers

For PvP – For this, remember – it’s a 5v5 – so a team game. I’ve tried a lot of builds and came to a conclusion that what suits best shouldn’t be changed.

But I’m not an expert.. playing casually :/

Elegy.2159:

These “bad” rangers that join your party, maybe they’re just new? Give them a few pointers, at least that’s what I would do if I ran into one.

The thing is, it’s 9 out of 10 (outside the world of pre-made groups/elitists).

Fluffball.8307:

The rage is compounded by the fact that rangers are one of — if not the best — skirmishing classes, so despite people considering us wastes of spots for 2 years, we would wind up easily killing people in small scale fights, which produced some cognitive dissonance. “Stupid ranger that can’t kill anything and is stupid just kicked the hell out of me.”

this is all you need to read, for it is the truth

Rangers have always generated the most angst/hate in every MMO I’ve played. I think that basically it comes down to the fact that people want to be Legolas and then find out they can’t be Legolas.

Dalwhat.2867:

people want to be Legolas

lol….thanks for an early morning laugh.

altho its never crossed my mind, wouldn’t you say that rangers are more like Aragorn? i mean he was called a ranger afterall. and the Rangers in Tolkien’s world were masters of multiple weapons. the only thing different is the pet.

oneply.9586:

Dalwhat.2867:

people want to be Legolas

lol….thanks for an early morning laugh.

altho its never crossed my mind, wouldn’t you say that rangers are more like Aragorn? i mean he was called a ranger afterall. and the Rangers in Tolkien’s world were masters of multiple weapons. the only thing different is the pet.

Yes yes yes… Legolas was a soldier. We all know the drill. After watching the hobbit who wouldn’t want to be Legolas though!?

Atherakhia.4086:

oneply.9586:

Dalwhat.2867:

people want to be Legolas

lol….thanks for an early morning laugh.

altho its never crossed my mind, wouldn’t you say that rangers are more like Aragorn? i mean he was called a ranger afterall. and the Rangers in Tolkien’s world were masters of multiple weapons. the only thing different is the pet.

Yes yes yes… Legolas was a soldier. We all know the drill. After watching the hobbit who wouldn’t want to be Legolas though!?

<—this guy
Aragorn gets the girl and the kingdom. what does Legolas get?

*thread drift!

Kilger.5490:

Probably the longbow of death. Few things end a fight faster than zerk spec rapid fire against someone already under pressure. Ranger is a hard add to compensate for.

This ^ Can any class add this much bursty damage from range?
With the push of one button, I can drop anywhere between 6500-11k dmg.

It’s nice to come into a fight just a little late, 3/4’s of my targets are at half health.
Shooting fish in a barrel at that point.

Because they are SO op downed.

i do not hate rangers.
i hate ranger players…or better players who think to play ranger
Player who unload their quiver with rapid fire while somebody is reflecting
Players who stand next to a downed ally in pvp or small group roaming and think “naah i kill dat three noobs solo and you can stand up agai… oh maaaan the three killed me in 3v1…ranger so UP”
Player who have no social honor and attack others in WvW who obviously doesnt want to fight and just want to complete the map (thanks to the mate who shot me from the Vista in middle fortress in Riverside Borderlands. i will find you my friend..i will find you..)

The poor truth is that i almost see all these poor properties at rangers and thiefes.
But thiefes are much more worse sometimes

Point Blank Shot is a big reason. It is badly designed skill too frequently used to troll and is inappropriate in a team fight in 90% of situations. So it’s no surprise that rangers have a bad reputation. It has too far a range, too short of a cool down, and knocks back too far. This combination is ridiculous for any class to have.

Next rangers are hated because they are generally ineffective in teams, PBS or not. They can be, but it takes a very narrow build to do it that cripples them in solo play. So most play tanky, selfish builds that keep them alive at the cost to the rest of the team. Too many times have I seen a ranger brag about how he was still alive when the rest of his team died. They don’t get that that’s actually a bad thing.

Buffing the longbow only made things worse because it enhanced all the problems above.

I think the problems come from the pet

The pet just gives us a heads up that there’s a ranger nearby and we should get ready to chase after mobs.

Ranger hate stems from people who frequently get rekt in pvp by rangers, so their only line of attack is to throw around claims of “most rangers = noobs” which is clearly a generalisation, and one that’s almost as dumb as “most black people = criminals”

Dalwhat.2867:

Rangers have always generated the most angst/hate in every MMO I’ve played. I think that basically it comes down to the fact that people want to be Legolas and then find out they can’t be Legolas.

Who wannabe Legolas where they can be Charrgolas!

SheiyeSai.6037:

Ranger hate stems from people who frequently get rekt in pvp by rangers, so their only line of attack is to throw around claims of “most rangers = noobs” which is clearly a generalisation, and one that’s almost as dumb as “most black people = criminals”

I suspect this is true. I remember the hate started close to launch when the SB was destroying everyone in PvP with very fast arrows.

cause most rangers can’t actually play ranger most go LB/GS cause they have no clue of the class mechanic, i myself despise any form of bow on ranger, i roll Sword/torch axe/dagger with some survival utilities and no i am not condi regen ranger nor celestial cause celestial itself needs a nerf
EDIT: and they have no potential in WvW thats why most guilds despise em, solo roaming they’re fine ,zerging nope

DemonforLife.8546:

cause most rangers can’t actually play ranger most go LB/GS cause they have no clue of the class mechanic, i myself despise any form of bow on ranger, i roll Sword/torch axe/dagger with some survival utilities and no i am not condi regen ranger nor celestial cause celestial itself needs a nerf
EDIT: and they have no potential in WvW thats why most guilds despise em, solo roaming they’re fine ,zerging nope

Maybe not zerging, but we are quite effective in havoc groups.

Ranger hate is quite simply because of the longbow and ‘challenged’ AI. Community is non-helpful as a majority want to play bear sniper.

At least we are not back to the earlier days when people would report any and all rangers they saw.

Most of the Hate
(1) Players can only play builds given to them by -certain streamers- and they can’t be bothered to alter their build to counter a class. Therefore, If they can not counter a class with the build that those people gave them, the class must be op and broken.

(2) Most players just run bearbow in PvP which is a complete waste of time

(3) Some Ranger Elitist ruin the idea of anyone playing the class because they feel if you run LB or SB you are a complete waste of time, “YOU MUST RUN SWORD/DAGGER” “YOU MUST RUN SWORD/TORCH” “NO BOWS”

(4) When the game came out , Short Bow was to hard for the average WoW player to counter. So anet decided to nerf it so hard that it became almost impracticable to use in pvp now.

(5) Little after the game came out, almost all the botters would run bearbow. This lead to a dark period in our time to where everyone would report anyone that was a ranger. Even if their names didn’t follow the stereotypical affsjafiy format.

In the end, the hate for rangers is caused by bigotry of Warriors,Thieves, Bot Reporters, and your typical narrow minded minors who refuse to adapt and learn.

Merry Christmas to all and to all, get the heck off our n*** already

Btw rapid fire is not a burst skill. If you cant evaid a 2.5 sec skill… Go and play helo kitty online

Dalwhat.2867:

Rangers have always generated the most angst/hate in every MMO I’ve played. I think that basically it comes down to the fact that people want to be Legolas and then find out they can’t be Legolas.

I’m sure there’s a lot of truth in that. People make rangers because they want to use a bow and a pet and rain death from afar, then they’re told to get in melee/boon range and use a sword. If they wanted to do that they’d have made a warrior or guardian.

I made my ranger because I wanted something a bit different — I have five other characters that do PvE meta melee (warrior, guardian, mesmer, necro, thief). So my ranger just does dailies and the Silverwastes (where a ranged/melee mix is pretty good).

It was the same with my ele, I found scepter/X and Lightning Hammer very effective but it turned her into Another Melee Toon. So I got a staff, and hung back casting big nukes, which feels like a real wizard.

It pains me to say, though, that there does seem to be a good supply of gormless rangers. E.g. I’ve been running taxis into SW and it’s been rangers who can’t grasp “join and leave”. Most people just do it, a few need a word in party chat, but rangers need kicking.

My reason has nothing to do with pets. I don’t care about LB rapid fire…its pvp…I expect death inevitably. And I run a GS/LB or Hammer/LB build as a warrior anyway in WvW and a Axe/Sword/LB build in sPvP…I love having a ranged option so it would be hypocritical to call BS on a class historically designed for it.

I hate rangers on sight because the sweeping majority of them arbitrarily knockback enemies for no. Good. Reason.

Eotm? Lets knockback the champion out of everyones stacked fields. WvW? Lets knockback the player I am about to wreck away from me so he has a chance to bolt. Open world PvE? Lets knockback the enemy so I have to chase it to keep meleeing, or just as it dies so I have to chase down loot. Spvp? See the above. And I don’t dungeon/fractal so maybe that’s their great call to reason but I doubt it.

And its almost always the case that they have plenty of room to fire or could back up a step…so the excuse of them pushing back to increase range and therefore personal damage is bogus.

I tried for a long time not to have it against a class just because some members are idiots. But the fight was lost…its become so prevalent that I immediately regard any ranger I see as an annoyance at best. The only ones immune are the ones I personally know not to be that thick.

And yes I have seen hammer guards/wars occasionally do it too…they get just as much hate from me…but they’re not nearly as prevalent as rangers are.

Its the mindless spaming of AA LB and press RF when not on CD, lol. No weapon swaps, its just dumb, i think this gives rangers the “rangers suck” cliche, a lot of builds are underused.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Been playing this game for some time, running dungeons daily. Number of meta rangers joined my party: 3.

1k hours, and only 3 rangers I came across knew how to play their class.

Figure it out yourself!

That is just because people know Ranger isn’t really a great class in the first place so people that tend to know how to play the game gravitate towards other classes (I haven’t played much in the last year so I am not speaking from current balance, as I haven’t played it).

Ashanor.5319:

That is just because people know Ranger isn’t really a great class in the first place so people that tend to know how to play the game gravitate towards other classes (I haven’t played much in the last year so I am not speaking from current balance, as I haven’t played it).

People don’t reject rangers because of what they know. They reject it because of what they don’t know Which bascially makes them bad players.

The ranger is a valuable member of any casual dungeon speedrun, if played correctly. It bascially has the same role as the warrior, mainly buffing the group’s damage through spotter and frost spirit.

Ashanor.5319:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Been playing this game for some time, running dungeons daily. Number of meta rangers joined my party: 3.

1k hours, and only 3 rangers I came across knew how to play their class.

Figure it out yourself!

That is just because people know Ranger isn’t really a great class in the first place so people that tend to know how to play the game gravitate towards other classes (I haven’t played much in the last year so I am not speaking from current balance, as I haven’t played it).

Ranger isn’t really a great class? you offend me.

Point blank is one of the best skills in the game… used properly.
But lately you can see a lot of trolls just playing ranger to use LB#4 all the time, I guess with the hope that anet will nerf it down.
its one of the skills that are actually useful not only for the ranger but also for the team.

I can say anyway that warriors, guardians and mesmers abuse with the push back skills as well, a lot of times I’ve been running after a mob with my GS after a mesmer pushed it away.
But that cases are also blamed on any ranger around, so look like that the ranger has a cool down of 1 sec in between LB#4.

If people have been using PBS to get it nerfed, then they’ve been trying since release. The poor use of PBS is not a new phenomenon.

Also, PBS does have a very short cooldown for its range than other knockbacks. The other knockbacks that have such a short cooldown also have some sort of drawback that makes them less appealing to spam. Overcharge shot has a much closer range and knocks the user back. Rifle Butt needs to be on top of the opponent to work, which is no place a rifle warrior should be to begin with. In their case, it makes sense to get opponents out of melee range. Rangers hit PBS from range when it is completely unhelpful for anyone.

I’ll agree, PBS is the best skill in the game. Because it is way too strong of a skill with no drawbacks. What’s worse is that it is so rarely needed that it’s more of a troll skill than anything else.