Guild Wars 2

Friends don’t let friends eat salad.

cool story brotato

Ursan.7846:

You imply that the OP’s opinion is invalid because “thousands” disagree with him, and he’s the only one who agrees with his own opinions.

Nope. I imply that it’s childish to argument with “learn to play” since it implies that everyone who doesn’t do it the way he thinks it should be done is a bad player.
which removes him from any serious and mature discussion.

I imply that maybe there’s a reason for all those complaints that are not simply explained with “you are bad!”
I imply again and again that I don’t have a severe problem with how the Ranger is right now, but that I agree with the DEVELOPERS (i try to write it in caps since you manage to not see it every time) who say that certain things need to be fixed.

Just because you want to be right, doesn’t make you right.

Can we please stop derailing the thread now? It’s getting ridiculous. Nobody in the world cares about who of us is right… if anyone of us is even right at all. So please just stop the opinion war before a mod might get the idea of closing this thread, because of us idiots fighting like children.

Victory.2879:

all they care about is pve where they are worried buffing pets will make soloing bosses etc too easy…

problem is… that they are actually right.
Ranger is very frickin powerful in open world pve…
but why is it that anet is so concerned with leveling or “farming” content, while at the same time acknowledging that there definitely ARE problems in other areas.
why do they value those few days of leveling content higher than the content that should keep players actually playing?
i just don’t get it…

they say they want to change the ranger for example dungeon-wise (which is considered end game “keeps you playing” content) but in the same sentence they mention that they don’t know how to do it without making the ranger “too powerful” in open world pve…

it’s my subjective opinion… but shouldn’t dungeon content be a higher priority for them?

Ursan.7846:

Thousands of rangers share your opinion but no one shares his opinion?

Did I say this? No.
Did I imply this? No.

I myself share his opinion partially.

But saying crap like “learn to play” implies that those people complaining are just bad at the game/class and that there’s no argument to be had, since the class is fine and everyone complaining is just not doing it right.

Did I complain? No.
I always have to repeat myself in this matter… But I defend those complaining people against other people who simply say “you are bad, learn to play!”

I myself have no problem in dungeons with the Ranger.
I almost never die. My pet almost never dies. But that’s because I got over 8 years of MMO experience and am quite good at the game.

What I DO say is… that it’s unfair that Rangers have to be awesome players to even be remotely effective, while other classes just roll their faces on their keyboards and do equal or better than us, since we lack in certain IMPORTANT areas – which is ACKNOWLEDGED by the developers. Again… I have to repeat myself… these are no speculations – these are statements by the guys who MADE the game and its classes. Is that too hard to understand? Where does the hostility come from? ^^

@kaizen.whatever
you are starting to redicule yourself and this thread so i’m not even going to dignify your obvious “my jimmies are rustled” provocation with a real answer.

Seriously guys… can never a discussion be had without someone going apekitten and feeling insulted? We aren’t twelve, guys… at least I think / hope.

edit: it’s funny how people on the internet always only defend their OWN opinions… I myself try to defend everyone’s LEGIT opinion (which means not arguing like a 6yo) since everyone’s got a right on opinion. and if you don’t like said person’s opinion then so be it… but don’t start those little “my opinion is more valuable than yours” wars…

what the… i don’t even…

catsassination – my new favorite word…. since it also applies to real life cats more often than not…

well… yeah… uhm… thanks for writing this, i guess? (^_^)b

You may feel useless because of two (main) reasons…

1.) Many other people have no idea what they are talking about and say that Rangers are 100% crap
2.) see reason 1

It’s really simple… most people think that burst dps is the most important thing when going dungeons. It may apply in some (few) situations, but overall the Ranger would be a good addition to many groups, when played correctly.
Sadly… many Rangers don’t do that. Their pet dies often, they themselves die often, they do lousy support (or even none at all) and deal hilariously low damage.
But that’s not the class’s fault.
People see classes like Warrior in PvE and think “OMG that’s just sick!” and actually… they are right ^^ I got a Warrior too, because I like big numbers. It’s scary how little effort is required to max out dps on a Warrior… Rangers can only dream about that few complexity.
Rangers have to be good players to be efficient. More often than not… those are hard to find —-> class get a bad reputation.

With my Ranger I >can< out-dps players of any profession… but that’s simply because I almost never die and got 100% uptime where other people consistently fail…
The Ranger got many short-comings – even the devs acknowledge this. But if you are skilled enough and practise you can compensate for these short-comings and still be better than most of the “ololol faceroll build” players you usually encounter.

The Ranger needs a buff in many areas and roles to be really equal to other classes in those perticular roles… but he’s not “useless”. The rep of Ranger as a whole being “useless” just comes from people being ignorant – on the internet! How utterly unexpected…

Saying “L2P” in such a discussion is like saying “Well you just have to cope with it” to someone that lives in a dictatorship state.
“You don’t like how it is? Well sucks to be you! Cope with it or shut up!”

It is every human beings first duty to raise his voice when he wholeheartedly thinks that something is wrong and has to change.
One’s concerns will never be heard if you don’t bring them up. Simple as that.

Thousands of Rangers think that something is wrong with the class. Thousands of Rangers raise their voice and want to be heard. Who are YOU to say that they just suck and have to L2P?
No no no… YOU are okay with how the class rolls right now, so you don’t want it to be changed, simply ignoring everyone’s concerns, since they aren’t yours.
Most of the wanted changes of the Ranger community would not even affect you in any way shape or form, but since you are okay with it right now, so has anyone else to be, right?

Sorry, but people like you simply disgust me.

What you say is partially true. We are not supposed to be the uber dps monster many people want to be. And I agree. The Ranger should be more than just being degraded to dps like many other classes/builds.
But the other stuff (besides dps) is subpar to every other class. We do kittenty support, got kittenty traits and kittenty utility skills. That’s not even ME saying that, it’s been said by devs MONTHS ago – still no change.

Maybe you should consider thinking out of the box and stop thinking that everyone has to be content with a situation YOU are content with.
Because – now comes a shocker – many many people aren’t.

ps: i’m sorry in advance for everything that may have sounded aggressive or insulting towards you

Ursan.7846:

I don’t think anyone is arguing that a Ranger, handicapped without a pet, can out-dps a Warrior GS, probably the highest DPS in the game.

We could potentially, since we have 100% uptime and the Warrior doesn’t (with few exceptions where he has 100% uptime – then he is really the strongest dps in the game)
But many things would have to be fixed to bring us even close to what the Warrior still does while not having 100% uptime.

Ursan.7846:

I’d say that it’s a moot point. If you completely ignore a class’s core mechanic, of course you’ll do subpar damage.

Yes. That’s what I am trying to say, too.
Someone mentioned that Ranger would still do great damage without his pet. It’s a matter of how one defines “great” though. Ranger does NOT do great dps without pet in MY and I guess also YOUR opinion. So we agree on that one. That was my sole purpose of posting in here ^^

Ursan.7846:

I’d also like to point out that the Ranger is not a ranged only class (Sword does more dps than SB, according to my tests).

It does more dps.
I only said that Ranger is designed in a way that it’s a viable possibility to play ranged only.
Also: Sword is sadly not really playable in difficult dungeons/fractals atm, since you’re constantly rooted and the damage is not worth it risking your life more than any other melee everytime you start attacking. Hell… you can’t even dodge during the kitten autohit animation…
(i want to play sword since it looks awesome)

edit: still have to come across a better romance anime… toradora is great i also liked sukitte ii na yo (fairly recent anime) but it was pretty much cliche after cliche in that one

edit2:

EDIT 2: My apologies, but I feel like I’ve gotten way off topic. People who disregard the pet often focus on its lack of damage while dead and ignores the many many benefits pets bring. Yea, pets are a source of damage. They are also 4 extra utilities, another target to draw aggro from you, and a source of great adaptability. What other class can bring in KD twice within a few seconds of each other? (With double dog). What other class can summon a minion that can attack while stealthed?

If all you want is to do damage, play a Warrior or Thief.

yep this^
that’s why I posted in here. I don’t like the idea of a completely pet-less ranger. and I wouldn’t want to play that way.
problem is – and gladly the devs agree in this one! – that we got pretty “meh” support atm. yes, knockdown is great etc, but almost useless for bosses. and the low survivability of the pet right now in fractals make the ranger more of a baggage than anything else. our support utilities are mostly crap. much of what we do is reliant on an active pet (which would be great if it weren’t constantly dead) and our “without pet” damage is “meh”, too…

i don’t like being considered useless by other players, just because I happen to enjoy a Ranger =/

Ursan.7846:

But you’d be surprised at how much DPS the Ranger SB is capable of.

No, not really. I use the SB with my Ranger and even roll a quite similar build to what you tested with.
I know what the SB is capable of. But it’s still low end tier without pet. Warrior Rifle and Ranger SB may be in about the same dps tier – as I said, I don’t say you’re fully wrong.

But think about it that way… you have to play great for 100% uptime with the strongest ranged weapon available to you (doing what you’re best at: ranged damage) to come close to or minimally exceed another class’s ranged damage, which is not designed to do that and would deal a ton of damage more with another weapon.
Like… warrior with axe or greatsword dps build. They don’t have 100% uptime, since they got to dodge and run around/swap to range and swap back to melee etc – but that’s still more than they’d do with range only, since they are not designed to be played fully ranged, while the ranger is designed to be playable 100% range only.

so you’re comparing a class that’s not designed for “range only” to a class which is designed to be playable “range only”.
See what my gripes are about with that? It’s like comparing apples to oranges.

Of course the Ranger can exceed other classes IN CERTAIN SCENARIOS – but one has to test – when comparing classes – by playing both classes the way they are intended to. and warrior is not really intended to be played ranged only. it’s a possibility, of course… but why would someone who wants to max out his warior dps-wise play ranged only?

so you compared a ranger that tries to do max dps with a warrior that plays rifle only which means not maxing out the class.

see what i mean?

edit: but in your thread you say you wanted to test exactly that. so it’s no criticism – i just say that it doesn’t apply to the overall damage capability discussion.

edit2: i got an Elementalist named Taiga Aisaka….. doesn’t add anything to the discussion…. just sayin, tho… gg

I didn’t fully read your thread since it’s 0:09 where I am right now and I’m tired.

But I got a Warrior and play him with the Rifle, so I got experience in that, too. And he outdamages my Ranger without his pet when both are build for raw dps – and without pet I mean no points in beastmaster since we’re talking about a “ignore pet entirely” scenario. (so the quickness with swap for example is a non thing to test except you only do it once a minute – simulating a dead pet)

As I said I didn’t fully read your thread and calculations, I may do so tomorrow. And your numbers may be accurate or not. But that doesn’t look too accurate to me…
Have you considered testing with the “Steady” weapons?
The results are much much… MUCH more accurate unless you’re testing conditions, since they don’t scale with the weapon.

Ursan.7846:

PS I’m not saying you’re right or wrong, but absolute, blanket statements like the ones you are making usually isn’t very conductive to good discussion.

i know. i’m just too tired to go in depth right now. no offense taken and so on… ^^

Ursan.7846:

Shouting about FACTS isn’t going to convince anyone. How about you do some DPS tests to prove your hypothesis?

Just from my previous tests, a Ranger with a pet and SB does more single-target ranged DPS than a Warrior Rifle.

I tested hours and hours. I also said “Ranger without Pet”. My statement is still a fact and not false at all.
I’m a very theorycrafty guy. I got tons of calculations about how to max out my characters. Since I want to enjoy the Ranger I got more of him than any other class by now.

Of course we deal average damage with our pet being alive, that’s how the class is designed. But someone argued about our damage still being great without using the pet at all – which is utter nonsense.
Without our pet we’d do much less than Warrior Rifle.
Without our pet we lose a large portion of our max possible dps, which puts us beneath almost every other class/spec.

And as I said – even the devs confirm that Ranger damage is designed with an always alive pet. So of course we do ok like that. But there are still lots of problems with how the Ranger works right now.

Just to say it again. Yes you are right in what you say. But I didn’t talk about Ranger with 100% pet uptime.

I never experienced that myself tbh, but I almost always used felines while leveling, so….
But if it really is the way you describe it….

No, I don’t think this is in any way working as intended ^^

The only explanation that comes to my mind would be that since you command your pet to attack, you also get into combat mode (fact) and since bears have high vit but average toughness (fact) and the enemy AI prefers targets with higher armor/toughness (fact) you could possibly be first target if you specced into toughness trait-line (speculation)

:)

5 would be horribly abused since people already get kitten about commanders – it would ruin the reps of more innocent people than actually bad commanders

i agree with the rest… although the fractal skins should be very expensive, since you get so much tokens when frequently running fractals. much more than any account could ever need.

KensaiZen.3740:

Yes I understand the mechanics of it, but when you spec into trait line 1 and 2 you have more then enough dmg to kill by yourself. Anything the pet does is just a bonus.

This is what I mean by just treating the pet like it doesn’t exist. Without points in BM the pet is pretty much useless anyway. The extra points into the other damage traits more then make up for the missing pet dmg.

You must be playing an entirely different game, since I know that this isn’t true. This is no opinion of mine, it is a FACT. You cannot argue with facts. It’s simply not true. The dps a Ranger without pet can achieve is lower than every other class’s. There is no room to argue, when it’s a fact.

To your “pet is just extra damage” theory. No – even the devs say that Ranger damage and Ranger in general is designed to ALWAYS have an active pet.

What you’re saying is simply not true, so I have to ask what you are trying to achieve by stating what is simply false in every way.

Whoever thinks that rangers can do great damage with a dead pet has to be fully oblivious of what other classes can achieve while facerolling.

I got a maxed out Thief, Warrior and Elementalist with different builds, different gear and thus different roles. The Ranger is inferior to all of them in every role he can take. Even WITH the pet.

Why is that, you ask? Simple…

Ranger is the only profession/class where its effectiveness is RELIANT on the pet surviving alsmost all the time. But to make this happen, we have to actively trait for that! We have to actively trait into our class mechanic. No other class has to do this to be at least somewhat effective in some role.
Sure… one can build a Ranger that goes 100% for player damage or whatever role he desires. But then the real problem comes up. Even when spending 100% of traits for the Ranger himself, he’s still vastly subpar to almost every other class. And crappy utility skills, trait lines and the damage split between Ranger and Pet ensure that you will never be as effective as any other class in any role they play.

I really love pet classes and I WANT to love the Ranger. But right now it doesn’t matter what I do, I always KNOW (since I got direct comparison!) that other classes can do much better whatever I want to roll.

Don’t get me wrong… I love our class mechanic! I love the pet! Or I WOULD love it, if it worked as intended…
But when I play my Warrior who doesn’t give a kitten about his class mechanic (traits even encourage not using the F1 AT ALL), or my Thief where the only purpose of F1 is to get 3 boons for a short amount of time and being able to shadowstep every X seconds…. I really ask myself why any group would put up with the extra baggage I offer with my Ranger – who right now has to play PERFECT to even be slighty efficient and not useless or even a burden to the group.

I love what they want to do with the Ranger. But I hate the way it works right now. Because it doesn’t. And that’s the problem.

So to answer OP’s question…

No I don’t want a Ranger who can play without his pet. But I want there to be the OPTION to do that, even if I wouldn’t want to play that way.
Every other class can choose to ignore their F1 mechanics, why don’t we?

I… sadly have to sign a lot of what Kata says.

I recently started playing Ranger after a long while (last time in beta), because it was actually the class I originally wanted to play on release, but decided for a thief in the end.
After maxing out my Thief, Elementalist and Warrior in all kinds of builds and roles… I have to say that I’m utterly disappointed by the Ranger. She’s 80 with almost max stats now and it’s so sad to see that whatever I want to do with her – one of my other characters can do it better by a LOT.
I feel useless when going dungeons or fractals. Although useless may not be the right expression…. it’s more that I feel like a BURDEN to everyone since I know that I would be much more efficient if I had logged on one of my alts for that run. It’s just so sad.

I enjoy the class and its design (I always loved the idea of pet classes), but in most cases it’s more of a hinderence in being effective.
Alright, I don’t have nearly as much experience as most Rangers in this thread… but reading this thread shows me that many other people got the same gripes as I do.

I really want to enjoy PLAYING the Ranger, but right now I can’t. Whatever I do, I get painfully reminded that someone or even my alts could do it much better.

Maybe I still need to learn a few tricks… but so many other Rangers got the same problems. Problems that don’t even exist with the other classes.
I like the idea of having a more important class mechanic… but the fact that our class mechanic is vitally important to even be “effective” at all while other classes just push their F keys when they are ready or sometimes even >not at all< wink warrior just gives me a headache.

Other things like “Longbow damage is a joke” shouldn’t even have to be mentioned.
Everyone with common sense has to agree that right now the longbow is really awful.
Why do I do more damage with my shortbow (autoshots only without flanking) than with the longbow at max range and using Rapid Fire? It just drives me nuts…
And yeah… many of the issues have been described by Kata.

Ranger may be a fun and awesome class on concept (that’s why I want to enjoy playing it!), but right now the reality looks pretty grim.

Funny thing is… if I hadn’t played other classes in the same roles, I would be totally oblivious to how “bad” the Ranger performs. But seeing the direct comparison is just insane.

Please let there something be done, so I can finally enjoy the class I wanted to enjoy from my first beta weekend forward… :<

ps: please excuse my partially bad english