Guild Wars 2

I’m new to GW and I’m confuse weather I play thief or ranger. I like a character that has a high dmg or with the high critical.
which one of these 2 can do high dmg? thank you

WvW/PVP go for a thief

PvE go for a ranger

Rangers are stupidly weak in WvW right now…

If you want to play a dps spec, thief is the way to go.

Rangers seem kinda meh to me, because they have to rely on their stupid pets.
Killing weak mobs solo will be very easy, because your pet will tank the damage, but any class can kill weak mobs. On harder encounters (like dungeons), your pet will be near useless.
(oh, and they’re junk in wvw, but that could be buffed in the future)

Summer.9072:

which one of these 2 can do high dmg?

warriors.

I played a Ranger for a couple months from the start of the game. I felt extremely good. Not really good, but as good as a ranger can be.

They’re extremely kitten when hitting people on the walls though. I thought they would be great.

Then I made an elementalist. A kitten load better with damage and survivability.
Then I made a warrior. Very very good.
Then I made a thief.

Thief can do anything better than a ranger.
Rangers are “free kills” in WvWvW.

My brother is always trying to convince me that they’re good, when he doesn’t have one. And I’ve been playing them for so long. They’re just trash. Free kills, regardless of the people saying how good they are and can kill anyone 1v1, they haven’t actually played someone who has some sort of decent skill. If they have, they are not talking about it. All rangers = free kill in WvWvW. Especially to a thief, warrior, elementalist, mesmer, necromancer, and guardian. Oh, and the engineers too.

To be fair, I’ve never lost to a ranger in a 1v1 setting, necromancer, or an engineer. (as a ranger) Then again, I’m sure they’re crappy.

So, i would roll a thief before ever looking at a ranger. Rangers are just made for bots. You see a ranger out in the PvE world, 9x out of 10, they’re a bot.

Doomdesire.9365:

WvW/PVP go for a thief

PvE go for a ranger

Rangers are stupidly weak in WvW right now…

Not true in my opinion regarding Rangers in WvW.

I think the real issue is that most people are determined to play the ranger in a certain way that is not conducive to success in the WvW setting. I wouldn’t want to play anything else tbh but I am a little biased.

King Jon.3128:

Thief can do anything better than a ranger.
Rangers are “free kills” in WvWvW.

My brother is always trying to convince me that they’re good, when he doesn’t have one. And I’ve been playing them for so long. They’re just trash. Free kills, regardless of the people saying how good they are and can kill anyone 1v1, they haven’t actually played someone who has some sort of decent skill. If they have, they are not talking about it. All rangers = free kill in WvWvW. Especially to a thief, warrior, elementalist, mesmer, necromancer, and guardian. Oh, and the engineers too.

To be fair, I’ve never lost to a ranger in a 1v1 setting, necromancer, or an engineer. (as a ranger) Then again, I’m sure they’re crappy.

So, i would roll a thief before ever looking at a ranger. Rangers are just made for bots. You see a ranger out in the PvE world, 9x out of 10, they’re a bot.

Dude 90% of rangers have no clue how to spec or how to play the class. Try playing some spvp and u will realize out of 100 rangers there is someone who has understood how the class works.
I lol so much when someone says ranger is easymode cos all you have to do is spam shortbow #1.

If you’re looking for the highest damage ranged character, you should roll a Warrior; Rifle Warrior is the highest damage ranged character in the game.

Rangers are utterly dependent on their pet to do anything. If your pet isn’t being amazing, your character is trash tier. Pets are held hostage by porous AI that struggles against anything that doesn’t just stand there and take hits. So, essentially, if you can play better than a bot, you shouldn’t play Ranger.

Thief has strong melee and evasive abilities, and has some useful ranged utility, but its ranged DPS is pretty lackluster. I would not recommend a Thief if you want to be a ranged single target damage dealer; the only class worse than a Thief in that respect is a Guardian.

PvE: Ranger is largely the winner. They are one of the best map completion classes and bring potent AoE damage with good survivability and a built-in AI off-tank. The pet tends to die quickly in dungeons, but the Ranger himself can put out decent condition damage regardless. Also, Healing Spring is extremely good.

PvP: Thief, hands down. Ranger burst is unreliable and based on random AI factors that are often completely out of their hands. They lack escapes and direct damage and tend to be shafted into a small number of builds.

WvW: Pets are completely useless here, but the Ranger’s longbow is nice in zerg clashes – Rangers have access to 1500 range, whereas Thieves are locked into 900 range or less. It really depends on your playstyle. Thieves are great gankers and dolyak-killers. Dagger Storm also tends to stomp in zerg fights.

Play Style:
Rangers tend to build for prolonged fights, using condition damage and heavy defenses. Their pet is about 45%+ of their damage. Ranger combat tends to be pretty afk-ish in PvE. Don’t get me wrong – there are more interesting builds, but 1-spam tends to be the class’ focus in solo PvE and dungeons.

Thieves are glass cannons. They deal hefty burst with great mobility, but lack in base defenses. They have a pretty good build variety. Most go for the burst route, forsaking survivability and wielding DD/PP or DD/SB. A variation is to go glass cannon with a S/P or D/P as your primary set, using Black Powder to survive in PvE. There are also venom thieves, which tend to be tanky ranged condition damage dealers focusing on party support.

Balance:

Rangers are “debate-ably” the current bottom of the barrel, in need of pet AI tweaks, damage buffs, utility tweaks, and trait fixes.

Thieves are strong. Definitely in the upper half of professions.

TL;DR

Pick the Thief if you want a self-sufficient (as in not pet-reliant) profession with more build variety and more viability. Or simply if you want a kill-or-be-killed sort of playstyle. Pick a Ranger if you want a more defensive class and have enough patience to wait for buffs and reworks.

Currently leveling a thief though to group with my friends thief in World vs World… tried doing it with ranger but we tend to get separated when I try and avoid zergs.

Thieves do not have to be glass cannon, lol; though I won’t fault you for saying it as this is a very common misconception. We actually make quite the control tank too for organized group play/solo ganking.

Ive never played ranger so I cant really tell you any details about them. What I can tell you is that thief is extremely good. People tend to overlook the shortbow when talking about thief’s viability in pve but it deals out pretty good aoe damage. Also, the ability to stealth and make all monsters stop hitting you is invaluable.

Fjandi.2516:

King Jon.3128:

Thief can do anything better than a ranger.
Rangers are “free kills” in WvWvW.

My brother is always trying to convince me that they’re good, when he doesn’t have one. And I’ve been playing them for so long. They’re just trash. Free kills, regardless of the people saying how good they are and can kill anyone 1v1, they haven’t actually played someone who has some sort of decent skill. If they have, they are not talking about it. All rangers = free kill in WvWvW. Especially to a thief, warrior, elementalist, mesmer, necromancer, and guardian. Oh, and the engineers too.

To be fair, I’ve never lost to a ranger in a 1v1 setting, necromancer, or an engineer. (as a ranger) Then again, I’m sure they’re crappy.

So, i would roll a thief before ever looking at a ranger. Rangers are just made for bots. You see a ranger out in the PvE world, 9x out of 10, they’re a bot.

Dude 90% of rangers have no clue how to spec or how to play the class. Try playing some spvp and u will realize out of 100 rangers there is someone who has understood how the class works.
I lol so much when someone says ranger is easymode cos all you have to do is spam shortbow #1.

We’re talking about WvWvW.
A warrior in sPvP isn’t the same as a warrior in WvWvW.
I don’t expect a Ranger in sPvP to be the same as a ranger in WvWvW.
With that said, the ranger is still an easy free kill to me and most people. This is a fact.

Mikemad.2495:

Ive never played ranger so I cant really tell you any details about them. What I can tell you is that thief is extremely good. People tend to overlook the shortbow when talking about thief’s viability in pve but it deals out pretty good aoe damage. Also, the ability to stealth and make all monsters stop hitting you is invaluable.

Rangers AoE with range is quite crap.
The thieves AoE range is far superior to theirs. Also, the thief can do it at will, as long as they have ini, which is almost always the case. The rebuild time is quite fast to spam their stuff.
Of course, their range shot is slower(num2), but in PvE, you do not have to stand far back to kill a group of 5-15 creatures with your group. Far better than a ranger.

If you want to kill PvE stuff with ease, the warrior is far superior in everyway. You do not have to rely on a weak pet to tank, the warriror can tank and dish out far more damage than a ranger could ever dream of.

The ranger, it is the weakest class in the game. The rangers who say they’re so good, as I said before, they most likely didn’t try other classes.

King Jon.3128:

The ranger, it is the weakest class in the game. The rangers who say they’re so good, as I said before, they most likely didn’t try other classes.

I’ve played all classes. There’s no way someone could be decent in pvp without knowing every class in the game and how to counter them. That said the ranger might be weak in wvw, i don’t really know since i don’t play wvw, but it’s not weak at all in spvp if specced and played properly. And tbh i don’t understand how this would be much different in wvw (small scale i mean, zerg scale is not even worth considering).
Then i would agree rangers atm have really few options, and they are defo not the best class in game, but that’s true for most classes, not only rangers.