What Could Rangers Do That Other Professions Can't?

I'm having a lot of trouble finding a place in teams, especially PUGs for dungeons and challenge missions and whatnot. I normally run an SoS build, but I can also go Splinter Barrage, deal fire or cold damage with specialized bows and Conjure Fire/Frost, etc. but I don't seem to be as useful as the rest of my teammates. Rangers seem to be the most out of place class because they have so little to give to the team.

I'm thinking of using a good pet build, but I don't know if that could be useful. I've tried condition spreading, but with the higher level dungeons having so many flesh-less or condition immune monsters, condition spreading just isn't very useful or practical (seeing that you need to be able to take out large groups quickly rather than depend on single target DOTs...).

td;lr: I don't know how I can be useful to a team without having to take the role of another profession and do it worse (aka be a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none character).

d-shot Spirits and signet resses (signet of return). Mesmers can't powerlock those else they can only dump 10 energy on psychic distraction and do nothing else.

Choking gas got overshadowed by Panic, but it's not removable. The problem is in HM the casts are too fast to be interrupted and choking gas only interrupt spells.

Well, not much, really. Key Ranger mechanics/skill types like condition spamming, traps, and nature rituals are either inefficient to the point of uselessness or not practical (or both). That pretty much leaves you with interrupts (but still sub-par to Mesmers, especially those with Panic or PI) and damage. You won't be able to outdamage melees, but you should be able to deal a worthwhile amount of damage. Perhaps look through the Ranger forum and look at what the general consensus is as to how to produce the most damage. I'd start with Dagger+Pet builds, but there are other options.

If you want to stick to ranger skills, the only really effective builds are ones based around a select few skills:

Barrage (AoE spam)
Enraged Lunge (lol 100 damage + deep wound spmmable)
Broad Head Arrow (longest Daze in the game, for bosses with obscene damage and -50% condition time)

The best you can do for general PvE is usually Barrage or Enraged Lunge + Volley, going /W for Save Yourselves spam along with For Great Justice. Don't cast Splinter Weapon on yourself, thats for noobs. Just bring a rit hero with 16 Channeling, its literally 2x as damaging as what you could run yourself and its not like the rest of the channeling skills the hero can use are underpowered.

Outside of ranger-based builds, Death Blossom spamming Daggers is definitely attractive. You can combine this with the above mentioned Enraged Lunge build and Never Rampage Alone, just be sure to tell your pet to attack something ELSE, since you want your target to survive longer so you deal more AoE damage. Main loss compared to the assassin is that you don't have SY up and your dagger damage is slightly weaker, but you have the pet.

Warrior weapons are less interesting. The awesome warrior energy-based attacks that you would want to use expertise to spam, namely Power Attack, are in Strength so you can't use them. You can use Hammers fairly well compared to a warrior, but hammers aren't good performers in PvE anyways.

R/D scythe builds are pretty much just lolbad now. Before when expertise worked to reduce the cost of all useful Derv skills and rangers had better IAS options it was great. Now that most good Derv builds need spammable enchants (which expertise doesn't work on) and Dervs have much better IAS/IMS available to them anyways, Rangers just can't keep up in any fashion.

until they decide to actually fix rangers... we are basically just 5th wheels in most parties, and with AScan being nerfed, it has actually made it worse

for partying up with peeps, a pure beastmaster build has been pretty good, so has spear/pet

there are many peeps testing out and tweaking new R/D builds, but as said before the derv update kinda made it harder for ranger primaries

Note:Khomet has a fairly decent prepared shot turret which is http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/User:...#Prepared_Shot i've used it a few times and find the damage to be nice

Ive actually found that vanquishing with bha makes everything ridiculously easy. Oh now where's the ele boss. Oh he's already dead.

Well as you said, versatility. They've got options to change their battle plan if it's not working. You got a lot of templates to work with, thumper, barrager, bha, hard core rupter, tanker, spirit user, pet master, dagger spammer.

BHA tends to be always a good bet, but in HM you do need to pay attention so it hits. Timing can be an issue considering theres more AI movement.

If I play a rit and there are rangers on my team, I always take spinter weapon and another skill that doesnt seemed to get used very often anymore....Great Dwarf Weapon.

I've been running an Oppressive Pet build with a Sabway or Spiritway hero team, it was actually quite effective for the Holdings of Chokhin Sunspear farm. I don't know if this is acceptable for PUGs though, I never tried.

As much as people malign pets, it's one of ranger's better current damage options. They lack AoE and can be a royal pain to control to anything useful, but it's generally better than waiting for poison spread to kill things.

Thanks so much for the options and feedback, guys! I'll try them all... not even joking.

Omg I've never seen Strike as One's icon before... I absolutely love it! New avatar? I think so!