Guild Wars 2

I want to start a ranger, but I have been reading some contradictory things about ranger, so I am a bit confused.

1. How good is ranger in PvP? In other forums (mesmer, thief, and elementalist), they all claim they can easily destroy a ranger. Thief and mesmer would say ranger has no chance because ranger has poor defense against condition and CC, and elementalist would say at least they can run away at will, so they will never be defeated by a ranger. But other would say, a skilled ranger almost never lose. So, which is correct?

2. Pet. I have heard people saying pet is useless in PvE even at early level (say level 25) because they die really fast. Is this true? My impression is bear is quite a tank.

3. AOE damage. Some people say ranger has horrible AOE damage. But it seems to me, trap ranger has pretty good AOE.

4. What would be a good PvE build? I feel I want to run a trap build. Does it work well in PvE?

Thanks for answering the questions

1) How good is a ranger in PvP?

WvV: I’m working on my next stack of badges of my ranger—a little over a hundred in the last couple weeks. I don’t run the jumping challenges. And I’ve been playing a lot of dungeons lately. So, yeah, I get plenty of kills; all 100 or so I have (on this stack) were purely from kills in the last three weeks.

1b) Poor defense against crowd control? My answers are the following buffet of choices:

Shared anguish / stability training = incoming disables converted to stability for pet; Empathic Bond, lightning reflexes, greatsword swoop, traps, and the list just goes on for means of escape.

2) Pet: Trait beastmastery, hits like a truck—if you don’t, make sure you are actively sending and calling back the pet. Many new rangers think the pet is useless because they make it tank a higher level champion (without ever healing it, protecting it, or calling it back for regeneration), and then they wonder why it dies. If you can’t tank an enemy, then assume your pet can’t either. If you let it die on the boss, I don’t have much sympathy for the complaints about the pet being weak.

3) The ranger has plenty of tools available for any given situation.

4) I usually run traps to play defense. And I won’t normally run more than one trap unless there’s special circumstances; circumstance also dictates which traps you choose. It’s not uncommon for a ranger to switch utilities and weapons to quickly go from offensive to defensive modes. For example, if you’re struggling running past an enemy, you might try Signet of the Hunt and Frost Trap. When you run passed the enemies, drop the trap and they can’t catch up.

Thanks, your explanation is very clear.

Here’s a guide I wrote for dungeons and caudicus manor as applied to rangers

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Dungeon-Basics-as-Applied-to-Rangers/first#post1365701

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Dungeon-Guide-for-Rangers-Caudecus-Manor/first#post1365865