Why do ppl say Rangers are the most versatile and difficult to master?

WHy is this?

I played through prophecies with my male ranger and okay it was fun. Two new campaigns later and eye of the north is coming out. I'm thinking of starting a female Ranger cos the EOTN armor is sick I started levelling up and got bored. Apart from beast skills, which I dont like to use in harder stages, I found myself creating the exact same builds R/Mo with interrupt skills, barage, toll ungent and power shot etc. Don't nearly all rangers use interrupt and one or two weak bow attacks? where's the versatility of say an Ele that has loads of builds based around, defence, dmg, hex??

Also, because I can't find many good varied builds to use on a Ranger, I find it easy and repetitive to use - Interrupt spell caster, attack with bow, heal if needed... Why do people say Rangers are hard to master? Should there be more to it than what I am doing?

thanks for your input on this

Barrage is a terrible skill in later levels. Yes, it's good to do a bit of AoE damage and spam it, but the range is adjacent which isn't always available to you.

You said you like interrupting, yes? Well [skill]Broad Head Arrow[/skill] use that. It dazes them allowing you and your pet's regular attacks to interrupt them while dazed. It's far more useful against monk bosses and elementalist bosses than trying to quickly hope your savage or distracting shots can make it there in time.

I play as ranger nearly always, and though a ranger is good at interupting, it depends on the situation, a ranger with glass arrows, conjure flame, triple shit, double shot deals out massive amounts of damage.

If i am playing interpt like darkobra said BHA is essential, though ideally as a interupter i also try and spread degen, poison, bleeding etc

I have to agree that rangers are the most versatile class.
You can play several different types of ranged attacker, from barrager to interrupter, to degen.
You can use a pet or no.
You can go full beastmaster.
You can go trapper.
You can pick up a hammer and go bunny thumper.
You can pick up some nec skills and go toucher.
You can pick up some daggers and use sin attacks.
etc.

I don't know of another class that can do so many things.

As far as them being the most difficult to master...I don't think this is the case. At least not with me..I'm on autopilot when I run my Burning Arrow build.

I personally find playing a monk to be more challenging.

Hi guys, thanks for the replies so far. Yes Darkobra, interrupting is cool. I also like to spread conditions. Can I just ask, why use BHA instead of COncussion shot? and then use a different elite? is it becuase of the energy difference?

I also like the idea of using glass arrows to increase dmg and then using double and triple shot (or as Tutis calls it triple shit ) so I'll give that a try.

ANy other interesting Ranger plays? I usually use barrage and interrupts which I'm already starting to realise may not be the way to go

thanks

ANthony

bha dazes unconditionally. concussion has to intrupt to cause daze

Concussion shot's energy at 25 is a bit much. 15 energy at 9 expertise brings it down to 10. That means you can also quickly use apply poison beforehand and have the poison's condition to cover your dazed.

Triple shit? Must be a Beast Mastery skill.

Never heard anyone say rangers are the most difficult to master but the versatility comes from the Expertise attribute. With the lower energy cost of skills effected by expertise, you can run solid build combinations of R/P, R/W, R/A, R/D (somewhat), or the much loved R/N toucher.

These are in addition to the different playstyles within the ranger's own attributes. For example, you could sit at the back of your group and play the lazy condition spreader, move into midline range and play a more active role of disrupting key targets or skills (interrupts, blinds, cripple, daze) - all the while dealing moderate damage but preventing more and allowing your team to function smoothly. You can even move up closer to the frontline to harrass enemy casters to hell and back; equip that hammer (or spear), take Snuggles off the leash and bash faces, daze casters and generally pound things relentlessly; throw up stances and put down traps in the middle of battle (not really recommended but it's a change of pace I guess); go solo or grab some friends to trap an area, pull the unsuspecting mob and watch them explode.

And with a workable energy pool and 3 pips of regen, the occassional spell can be thrown in without having to take much of a hit. All of this allows for versatile and, more importantly, viable, builds and playstyles.

And if nothing else you can take it into PvP or Alliance Battles and give melee characters fits with the arsenal of stances available to Rangers. Escape, Whirling Defense, Storm Chaser, and all the others, when used correctly will cause cursing and gnashing of teeth on the part of your adversaries, causing them to liken you to Assassins in terms of sheer annoyance.

(If you couldn't tell it's been a bad morning for me in PVP....)

Rosette you forgot throw dirt :P

If you HAVE to use BHA to interupt then you have not mastered Interupting. I feel RtW or FW or even NR are more important to interupting than BHA.

If you want to be a MASTER interupter then learn MageBane Shot.

If you wanna be a Master bater, well you know what to do.

To the OP, like the guy said, if all you do is interupt caster, bow attack, heal if needed then, you are not taking advantage of the versitility. Look up so builds on wiki, look for ones that take advantage of the secondary proffesion.

No, I didn't. Throw Dirt is a skill, not a stance. =P

But yeah, please don't go Touch Ranger. It's a dated and irritating use of the profession, and they're highly frowned upon. Definitely not a good way to make friends.

Touch rangers are only really good for AB, and even then they can be easily defeated, crip shots, mesmers, ele spike, and sins...grr remeber back in the day always coming in hitting me and shadow stepping out...

rangers are pretty easy to play in PvE. Their versatility shines mostly in PvP, where they are the only class thats can be used for almost all the main roles in PvP. AOE, Melee, Spiking, Interrupting/shutdown, spirit spam, ect. The only role rangers cant really take is healer, for obvious reasons...:P

Ranger, in my opinion is one of the easiest to master. One people need to master better are the warriors and assassins, since 7/10 of them seem to be unreliable. Especially when they don't use frenzy correctly.

Rangers can be a lot of different things, which is neat, but in my opinion, the hardest classes to master would be the monk, mesmer, and assassin. Some people say mesmers are useless, I highly dissagree. In my opinion, they can outclass other professions easily. A class set more for veterans, however. Any person can put hexes on a person, but to do certain abilities they do, is pretty neat.

I actually agree with this a 100%. warriors, sins AND dervishes should master their skills/build/behaviour a lot better than most rangers. And again. IMO Mesmers are without doubt the hardest to master. It's my only char at lvl 6 lol Guess I'm even in that early stage to naab to play one ^^

Eh, its really all about play style. I'm a great mesmer and found it very easy and intutive. I still can't really play a ranger. Warrior took me a while to get used to since I was so used to playing casters, but once I got used to it, playing as a Sin and Devish followed naturely (both of which just play as a more fickle, non-tanking warrior).

Rangers on the other hand seem very out of place to me. They don't play like any of the melee classes or spellcasters. Other professions have some similarilities. A blood necro plays very similar to an air ele. A monk and a restoration rit play similarly. Etc. Nothing really plays even close to a ranger except for a paragon (which is still very different).

I think a ranger is just hard to master because if you are used to casting a bunch of spells or running in bashing away with a melee weapon, its hard to get used to using a ranged weapon all the time.

It is really just dependent on what you start playing with. If a ranger is the first thing you played, then it seems easy to you. If you played 2 or 3 caster characters through the game before creating a ranger, it takes a lot longer to "unlearn" all your habits from other classes.

Hi guys, thanks all very much for your comments. I'm lovin this thread. Seems I have alot to experiment with my new ranger. Never even heard of MageBane and some other acronyms, I'll have to check them out. What secondary prof do you guys use? I went for R/Mo last time. Not sure whether to do the same again. And I will look at some more versatile builds now.

thanks

Anthony

I think a lot of the versatility is more in terms of PvP/GvG, as someone else already mentioned. In GvG a ranger can do a lot of different things to help out the team with just one build. It can split, it can defend a base, it can pressure with the main group, it can interrupt offensively or defensively, it can snare (if you're running cripshot).. that's a lot more than a lot of classes can do with a single build in gvg.

i played ranger first and it made it hard for me to play anything else lol
i accually like sin more and in some ways sins and rangers are alot alike

1. use energy based attacks
2. 70 base armour (ok sins dont get +30 elemental but meh)
3. defensive skills are great (and imo needed) ie. whirling defense, lightning reflexes, throw dirt, escape, critical defense, flashing blades
4. spread conditions well if set up that way.... ie. burst sins and burn+poison rangers