Guild Wars 2

Hello guys,

First i want to point out that i’m new to guild wars but have experience in mmo.I looked around for the ranger and how it performs in pve dungeons and everything except( pvp / wvw in wich i’m not interested).
To tell you the truth i’m scared to roll a ranger after what i’ve read.I mean the ranger is that bad that it would get kicked from a group in dungeon… Don’t get me wrong i don’t like face rolls i want some challenge in a class to learn and get better at it but still i need from you to help me with some info.
Can i roll a ranger and get the full experience of gw2( except the pvp , maybe i’ll try it) without being pushed away just because i’m a ranger?

Go ahead, the 0 → 80 playtime is very fun.
But… It will be difficult for you to find random parties to do dungeons with. People will silent-ignore your party join requests. You will probably get upset with the pet too.
I have my ranger parked because I am waiting for some proper fixes (the only I want is better pet pathfinding and split-second F2 activation).

If you want to “get the full experience of gw2” without other players hindering you then you should play one of the more popular professions.

There ARE things you can do to be effective. If you really like the class and it feels good to play stick with it and stop reading here.

That being said I won’t lie to you and tell you I feel the profession mechanic is good. It isn’t. There have been debates after debates on this from the forums about this already that I’m sure you’ve read. Also the way the class is designed forces you to focus on Utility skills and select traits to define your role instead of having weapons being the more defining aspect like every other profession. This profession was designed completely backwards to all the other professions and although it can be played, enjoyed, and used effectively in some settings it is not a class I feel I can recommend to anyone.

Don’t read too much into the forum. Everybody has an opinion on the Ranger these days. The best thing you can do is play the Ranger for yourself, and make your own judgement. Personally, I have never had an issue finding a group for dungeons. Neither have I been kicked from a group because I was playing a Ranger. Of curse, there will always be the jerks who think they got the whole game figured out, but if you come across them, you should be the one leaving that group.

The most important tip is to be mindful of your pet, and don’t let it wander off and lure unnecessary mobs to your group. You’ll hate yourself for doing that, and so will your group. Use the active/passive option often, and stow the pet when you and your group want to sneak past mobs. Also, get to know all the pet’s strength and weaknesses, so you know which pet to use for a given situation.

The Ranger is amazing dont listen to these boards. These boards are for us that want MAXIMUM results from the class. The Ranger, due to its pets, cannot be used to MAXIMUM potential. We are probably sitting at about 75% tbh. With that said, a Ranger at 75% is still kitten mighty. Forget the mix/maxing while leveling up and get your slaughter on. All of our weapon sets are viable and we’re good at range and melee. Just enjoy it

We have concrete problems with this profession when it comes to F-functionally. When you are leveling you might not notice it but once you start doing dungeons, fractals, world zerg fights, end game content like WvW zerging you will encounter these problems with your pets and F2 functionally.

As for the boards, if you enjoy playing the Ranger now continue doing so. Its a fun, very fun profession but when it comes to end game at level 80 our pets might be more trouble than good.

Just my opinion.

I love the ranger class and I just got two legendaries because I am absolutely sure that it will be my main class for quite a while.
Everyone hates the pets it seems to me. I love them. With the pets you get “free” utilities which you can switch out at any time.
You need a personal tank for example to solo camps in WvW or for tough dungeons? Take the bears with weakness and chill or if the encounter is not extremely hard you can use the drakes and have good aoe damage with blast finishers and burst damage.
You need CC? Use wolf and hound. They are just awesome. Two knockdowns, AoE fear and AoE Immobilize. Thats decent especially while roaming in WvW.
You want to support the group? Take the red moa for 50% fury uptime for the group. If you get lucky or play well you can even get a 3400 heal out of the moa in a small radius.
You need plain damage use birds or cats but they are squishy! You might prefer drakes as they deal good damage too and offer a blast finsiher + good survivaiblity
You can use spiders or devourers if you prefer. I love the pets.
It’s simply about you handling them well and finding out when to use which pets. Once you realize the strengths of the pets and know when to put them on follow or when to stow them (if you are out of fight like sometimes during jade fractal) pets won’t be as bad any more as people tell you.
What is true is that our utilities define the class alot. It’s a weakness and a strength at the same time because we can’t have too many of them even though they are so important. If they were on our weapon skills that would be great

Today I needed a build with good damage + insane survivability for the Arena. I had to fight the Dunwell with five debuffs. I had zero endurance so I was not able to dodge.
Now imagine what was possible: I used full zerker stuff, a 30/25/15 build with active signets working for the ranger and Lightning reflexes, Signet of Stone, Protect me and the Elite spirit while using longbow.
As pets the wolf and the jaguar.
So I had insane abilities – Longbow knockback every 12 seconds, wolf knockback, wolf fear as interrupts.
For survivability lightning reflexes against the onehit, Signet of Stone is a 6 sec damage immunity on 64 sec of CD (or 80), Protect me killed the pet but saved me and the Spirit healed me for 480 every second + can potentially rezz you two times after a oneshot.
All this in one build. Even though this was situational it shows the potential and how awesome the ranger class can be. The Elite spirit is also godly in groups to rezz your downed teammates and for awesome heal.

The ranger is not as bad as people tell you. I suggest that you play one and find out if you like the class or not.

Oh and for invasion farming I use longbow with -20% cd. I use barrage, place fire traps (not skilled), send my drakes to groups which I don’t attack with my bow and press F2 and use piercing arrows to shoot many mobs in a line. All that with full zerker gear and 1500 range is just decent.

Leveling from 1-80 will be quite fun as a Ranger, I guarantee that. But do NOT get fooled into thinking you can just stand in one spot and have the pet tank everything. It’s a trap to lure you into feeling safe until the game throws something at you that you need to dodge and use skill to survive in (for most Rangers, that seems to be Claw Island for the Personal Story). A good way to help with this is to keep one melee weapon as a weapon set once you hit level 7 at all times. Because you’re in melee range for that set, you’ll start to get used to the tells on when to dodge, and when to use which skill to make surviving easier rather fast.

Just remember, while we’re a very easy class to level in open world PvE, the ‘skill’ cap for the player yourself is higher for dungeons and instances due to our pets being borderline useless in many a boss fight for those.

Don’t listen to the haters, wasters, and burn outs. Ranger is fun! Our skills are sweet and our DPS is on par. Find a build that works for you, find the pet that works for you, and have fun. I’ve had no issues finding groups for instances. I WvW as well as anyone else. I don’t PvP, but friends of mine say a Ranger is just fine in PvP. As for not being popular, the last report I saw showed Rangers as one of the most played professions in game.

Just my two cents.
Ranger is a good class that still needs some polishing. Not going to deny it, or try to argue it, it’s a fact. Also for the end-game (wvw, lvl 75+ dungeons) you will likely need more skill than a warrior or guard to survive. The class is fun to play, a bit more dificult than the others (longer learning curve).
Anyways my advice is to give it a go, see if you like it and if you do have fun.

best advise anyone can give you, reroll do the right thing and choose other class, to many issues and problems. Now with ascended weapons, trinkets and soon armor you probably will want to have just 1 main (unless your rich) and having a ranger might not be the best of ideas.

pavelbgd.1460:

To tell you the truth i’m scared to roll a ranger after what i’ve read.I mean the ranger is that bad that it would get kicked from a group in dungeon…

Don’t be scared because there are so many QQ rangers out there.. It is a fun class to play.. And a group that kicks a party member because he/she is that specific class, isn’t worth the hassle anyways..

pavelbgd.1460:

Don’t get me wrong i don’t like face rolls i want some challenge in a class to learn and get better at it but still i need from you to help me with some info.

The learning curve of a ranger is higher than (for example) thief. But this is one of the great things when learning to play your ranger: You feel very satisfied when you accomplish something with it..

pavelbgd.1460:

Can i roll a ranger and get the full experience of gw2( except the pvp , maybe i’ll try it) without being pushed away just because i’m a ranger?

Yes! Did all the dungeons, farmed fractals, spend ages in WvW, occassionally PvP, participate in some PvE carnivals, … it all works nicely with a ranger..
Once again: groups that push out a ranger because he is a ranger are bad groups.

The ranger class is definitely fun to play, I had such a fun time leveling it from 0-80 I didn’t even mind doing pve events (I’m a pvp/wvw guy). Just know that when you are looking for groups to do dungeons with or going out to do some WvW people may not completely accept your class. On countless occasions, I’ve been rejected by a group because they have this notion that rangers will only drag them behind. Even my guildies laugh if I play on my ranger and ask me to play a class that could help more. The pet mechanic is the deal breaker that hinders the Ranger from any true progress, sadly.

m walker.7836:

Even my guildies laugh if I play on my ranger

Wow, sounds like a cool guild.. :/

Why are you in such a guild, m walker? I would have dropped them a while back, and just started my own up.

thank you guys for all your help and advice.i rolled a ranger its @ lvl 10 and having fun

pavelbgd.1460:

thank you guys for all your help and advice.i rolled a ranger its @ lvl 10 and having fun

Glad to hear! Have fun with it!

Tribio.8531:

m walker.7836:

Even my guildies laugh if I play on my ranger

Wow, sounds like a cool guild.. :/

My guildies and I are close so it doesn’t matter, it’s all fun and games. They would rather have another class that can bring more to the table, is all. I don’t want to be holding them back, that’s not fair to them.

You’ll be fine in pve and pvp as a ranger. A lot of people whine at rangers because there are a lot of rangers who SUCK. Compared to other classes we have to swap out skills during dungeons more often along with pets to be truly effective. Rangers are king of open roaming in PvE and actually a group of 5 rangers actually can do dungeons faster than 5 warriors. It is just a harder class to play with a lot less competent player group. Although there are issues i still have with the class like the longbow speed, pet f2, pet responsiveness, aoe on pets, large amount of useless utilities, and some traits need to be reshuffled/reworked.

Everyone has their own idea of fun. While i am sure some of the posters here are good players. “Doing fine” can have different meanings. Let me explain things from my PoV.

I only do dungeons, no wvw, no pvp and when my static group isn’t online, i pug. I am sure a lot of those rangers do “fine” while being at max range with LB. They never get downed, they don’t receive buffs (too far away), have 3 unused signets and dead pets. Despite this, i don’t kick players being bad, but for being kitten. So you can be DM and doing “fine” in all content.
Sure every profession has those, but rangers so far i have seen, are the biggest culprits.

Lets compare a ranger to a warrior. The warrior has a lower skill ceiling, thus an average warrior will do much more for the party than an average ranger. Many rangers stick to range and do pitiful dmg. The average warrior will still do more damage despite being downed a few times.
In a game where dps is king, bringing a LB slinging range-only ranger is a handicap.

So to the OP, if you want to have fun, go ahead and have fun. But just know that you will be stigmatized by some dungeon-runners. Depending on your playstyle/build/gear, you can be branded as a baddie or a good ranger.

Only make a Ranger if you plan to solo. You won’t be invited to groups.

wmtyrance.3571:

Only make a Ranger if you plan to solo. You won’t be invited to groups.

There should be a penalty for putting such utter nonsense on a public forum. I shake my head when i read this kind of stupidity.

If you try ranger?

At LV1-20 you will learn about thing how to use and go slowly.
(This LV will choose your love weapon use most.)
Next 21-40 you will change map and learn how to control/collect pet.
After that it your adventure.Go wherever you please.

About ranger try all traits learn how effect they have.
Go and findout your new pet.
Sometime your love weapon not effective with some type of monster
don’t stubborn try another weapon.

Pet is your best friend in your adventure try F1 F3 or passive mode control by yourself sometime.

Ridiculously great and awesome in pvp/wvw average in pve nuff said

Great class. I tried most and settled with my ranger a year ago, and I now even have a ranger alt. May not have the best damage or survivability, but it’s definitely one of the most fun classes to play, on par with elementalist.

if you realy want to play ranger you are in trouble. it was never good and nerfed to the hell. pet is kitten. most of our traits bad. but maybe they change it in this year.

I feel The ranger is a great class. Those that have trouble with the ranger usually have trouble keeping there pet alive or totally ignore them or only use their bows.

People complain that ranger can’t stack conditions like the other classes while this is good for pvp and wvw. In PvE you are in a group and need to work as a group. Those that stack a lot of condition tend to set on the damage of others in the group or have their damage totally negated because someone else has stronger condition damage.

Some say pet are useless yet one of our stronger build is still BM. While it’s true rangers don’t do zerker as well. We still can do really well with zerker builds in pve.

Learn to manage your pet and learn how to effectively use each weapon and you will see rangers are not as bad off as some would want to think.

ranger in PvE as in dungeons can be very powerful and a great DPS dealer with some support. Sword/Whorn is the way to go.
I know people think it is suboptimal in dungeons, and I was one of those thinking the same.
I realize that the class, well played, can be a very good asset for e dungeon team.