Rangers Unite!!!!!!

This may noy be the place for this thread but.............

Has anybody else noticed that rangers get crapped on in Guild Wars. Do not get me wrong I love the game but come on Beast Mastery is like the worst skill in the game and now Thanks to the new Capture Sig rules we have to go all the way to the Freaking ring of Fire to Get barrage. The Best Ranger skill in the game, Sure makris has it but now in order to get a skill you have to kill the boss and when you kill Markis "POOF" the mission ends. THAT JUST SUCKS!!!!!!! this need to be fixed NOW or at least next Update wednesday. AS to the above mention Beast Mastery the DEVs should combine the skills charm animal and confort to one skill or at least get rid of the both and use an animal totem instead. Which you could put in your inventory. Keep the pet attacks skill to be fair but enough is enough. The way is is now you need 4 slots to have a good pet. that is way too much.

Rangers are pretty good. But yes, at first glance Beast Mastery does look a bit lacking. But even so, rangers have overcome this. So, if Beast Mastery is improved? THEN RANGERS WILL TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!

I am R/E 11 and am having a great time playing. Noone has ever in game said anything derogatory about my class as we teamed up for a mission. I think my level 11 wolf and my nasty Ignite arrows add something to the squad. Maybe all this anti Ranger stuff is PvP which I have never done, and probably never will.

I think beastmastery is one of the best lines in the game. The mana cost and recharge times are extremely low for what you get. Compare beastmastery to any warrior line and you will be amazed. So, as far as that goes I have no clue why your complaining.

As for the skill part of it, I see your point, but its one skill. Its a bug that has been discussed alot, and it's my understanding something is being done about it.

Rangers unite ? An excellent idea. First time I had grief from another player was yesterday while doing the gates of Kryta mission (2nd char). There was this n/w that kept on saying 'the ranger better know his job' and 'we should have kicked the ranger'...


Funny thing was though, not only only were the rest of the party telling him to shut the flip up but that he decided to act as a tank and go charging in to groups of mobs. Most strange. Of course he quit the party after we got the bonus so I think that tells you all about that particular person you need to know.

Barrage the best ranger elite skill?? I hardly ever use it. Barrage works only on enemies bunched together and doesn't even work with preparation. It works in pve with lots of mobs zero in on you, but in pvp it's not as useful as poison arrow. But yes, rangers should unite and develop some kind of professional pride. It's ironic that a necro discriminated against a ranger, because necro is just as screwed in GW as ranger.

People who play Rangers reall need to focus on the various ways they can support their group.

In PvE, you can duck in right behind your tanks when they get aggro'ed and use healing spring, while spreading your poison...always one target ahead of your warriors. You can do the same tactic by putting yourself next to your spellcasters and healers. Also, I can't tell you how many times Pin Down has been crucial to the success of our groups.....take the aurora glades mission for example.....crippling those crystal carriers can really make a difference. Also, Ranger is one of the BEST professions for pulling mobs out of big groups. (Ex. the Riverside Towers mission...Galrath...TotA.). And a Ranger who knows how and when to use interrupts like distracting shot and savage shot are priceless when you start hitting higher level mobs. All in all, in PVE...a good ranger will make each battle easier for EVERYONE in the group.

PvP....it's all about Poison and interupt. True, rangers dont get much respect in PvP, but not because they stink....more because taking down healers and warriors is priority one. Use it to your advantage, knowing that you'll prolly be one of the last guys attacked, and do what Rangers do best....support your team. Rangers don't do enough DPS to be considered a threat on their own, so you have to identify them as a support class, and use your strengths accordingly.

I have to agree with the charm and comfort skills. For what I am trying to do with my build, I find having both Charm Animal and Comfort Pet to be skill slot hogs (considering I also carry a Rez Signet). I don't feel that my current Beast Mastery skills are worth exploring (at this point). So I just use my pet as fodder (I don't carry Comfort). Once he dies, his corpse stays in place until I zone to another area. It just isn't worth losing a preparation or interrupt in order to revive the pet.

The idea of combining Charm and Comfort is a good one, IMO.

-chojin

Well lucky I got barrage but I'm sure there was another mission where you have to kill markis... I think thunderhead keep, can't remember but can't you get barrage from there, I remember the one in Irone Mines where you kill him and mission ends. Hmm can't remember maybe i'm getting my missions mixed up.

Anyway barrage is really good on enemies tightly clustered like scarabs, its works REALLY good on them. Its quite annoying though that for barrage to work the enemies have to be quite close and I mean really close but apart from that I think its a really good skill. If your a mesmer seconday then I'd pick poison arrow or incenediary arrows anyday since its goes really well with conjure phantasm and phantom pain.

About the charm animal...I wish they changed it so that you don't have to carry it for the pet to follow you, I mean you charmed it, you own it... you don't need a freaking skill for it to follow you as if its like under a hypnotist spell or something. I prefer that if you charmed an animal then it always follows you outside without the need for the charm skill to be in your skillbar, if they add in-game commands like /sit /wait to call your pet it would be cool, if they took of the death penalty of skills recharging again that would be even better.

You're just using it wrong. And don't let anyone try and tell you there's only one way to play a ranger in PvP (poison everyone, etc.) Try different things, play other classes to learn their strengths and weaknesses, and realize that you might have to drop wilderness survival to get anything done. You might feel a little insecure about not having troll unguent or storm chaser so you can run around and annoy people after the battle's been decided, but that's tough cookies. This is not to say that wilderness survival is useless; in fact, it's one of the better attribs for bastardly ranger tricks. But sometimes you need to fill a different role.

If you're serious about using a pet, you need to have a lot of pet skills. I run with 5 minimum, and often throw in a 6th. The pet can do things twice as good for half the energy cost, so why keep personal skills when your pet can do nearly everything for you? Also, treat beast mastery just like marksmanship. Do you ever leave home without your marksmanship attrib below 12? I should hope not. Beast mastery affects your pet's base damage, which is equivalent to a max damage bow (15-28 @~2s refire). I promise that if you toss in ferocious strike (the elite pet attack) and pump your beast mastery to around 15 or 16, you'll see results, just like you would if you pumped any other stat to 15+.

Pets are how rangers achieve the damage of other classes. If you have a pet, and your beast mastery matches your marksmanship score, you are basically doing double your normal base damage. Now throw in ferocious strike to feed your energy reserves and you can spam massive power attacks with both bow and pet until you get tired of it. In PvP, be sure to bring along pin down and/or the pet cripple attack to prevent people from running away from the pet. In fact, why don't you just look at this build which I end up linking to in every ranger complaint thread to show how to build a ranger that can't be ignored. It still takes people by surprise in arenas; no one expects the pet to hit so hard, because so many amateur rangers use their pet as an ineffective meat shield. No one expects the pet to be nearly impossible to kill, because I heal him for 104 every second and he gives me the energy to spam it repeatedly.

Beast mastery is not useless by far. It's just misused.

At first in the lower levels i thought having a pet was great. It did a good amount of damage when i went for solo adventures and i took good care of him.
I invested a few points into BM and even used a couple of slots for pet skills on occasions.

In later stages, my pet became a major headache and i used it less and less. Having my skills stopped for 8 seconds upon the almost instant death of my animal sometimes prevented me from using a specific skill at a crucial moment.
Pulling a mob during a team mission was impossible if i had a pet because it would run stupidly into the crowd like stefan [fighter ****head] or that 1 watt bulb warrior that finds his way into your party every time.

I have never applied serious amounts of points into BM so from that standpoint i don't know. I do know that having points in healing, marksmanship and expertise helps to keep myself alive and does my job as an interrupter/puller.

If skill slots were not hogged by BM skills, as metioned, i too may think about using my pet more.

Us poor rangers are undervalued but only by the ignorant. Those players who respect us are the very people who have or do play as a ranger with another character, or who have seen us in action.

Pets just aren't worth it at higher levels, but I'm not saying they're completely underpowered (only slightly. ) I've played around at higher levels (in PvE) with attributes, and have gone as much as level 14 beast mastery. I also use comfort animal and healing spring, but the pet is still really difficult to keep alive. So far, I've experimented and found a few good ranger builds that I really like, none of them involving pets or beast mastery. I think pets really need a little more HP growth, so that they are useful at higher levels.

i play a ranger for my main, i live in maryland, and play on the amarican servers ( that might have somthing to do with the "classisom"), i like playing a ranger, i do sometimes get "rangers suck", or if we "need a monk" im often the one to get kicked, but i find that how you play a ranger, unlike the three other classes is more, not totaly, but more, based on preffrence, such as nature ritchules or beast mastery or marksmanship they all acomplish difrent things unlike the warrior, who has one choice, mealie on how to dispacth his foes

was his name ranger redhead? It happens to me all the time, ppl telling me I shouldnt tank, but on most mobs, vile touch works better than my bow skills, so... Anyway the pets are - in my opinion - more for fun and originality than effectiveness, although my little warthog really owns . Just a question tho: do pets grow over time (or over lvl) or do they appear in different heights? cuz ive seen a wolf wich was... well... bigger than the one I had at the time, and he was a higher lvl.

Pets do grow bigger as they level. I have a level 20 warthog who's about twice the size in each dimension as wild warthogs.

Really kinda shocked that the "Uber" rangers havnt gotten on here yet calling everyone nOObs for not knowing how to play the class properly . And then telling us how they can kill and "pwn" other classes in 2 shots or take on 4 w/mo and a monk and win. they will say all we need to do is use 3 diferent preps and traps (while their team is getting nuked into oblivion or chases the other team all over the map).

sting, u are right, rangers are not a class that work with a team... we work alone (that sounds silly) Ey Magus, tnx for the answer.

Heh.

Of my 4 characters, it looks like 3 of them are going to have a ranger secondary.

My warrior uses the pet for two things: a place to store spare atribute points (because other than Strength and Swordsmanship, I need nothing else), and as help finishing the job. I can't tell you how often, especially in PvP, I've killed one enemy, reduced another to ~5%, died, and then watched as my pet pushed him over the edge.

My Necromancer is still in the early stages of pre-searing, but I plan on making her a master of Extras, going heavy on the Bone minions and her pet.

I think my Mesmer is going to take Ranger as his secondary because I'm a speed addict and Dodge looks like the speed skill for me.

That is silly. Rangers can work with their team just like any other class. It's usually just a matter of communication, especially if others don't know how your ranger is capable of helping them. Wilderness survival is an excellent attribute for helping your team.

One more thing. I wouldn't say barrage is the best ranger skill in the game.

Rangers have SOME excellent abilities, but they are not as good as other classes.

One of the biggest problems with GW's PvP (IMO), is that people don't want or NEED support classes. 5 Air Elementalists can spike anyone to death, regardless of anything, and a troupe of warriors can hammer pretty much anything to death. There's no reason to have Mesmers/Rangers/Necromancers in your party except for a few specific skills, which the other 3 classes can get by having Ranger/Necro/Mes secondaries.

Ok, Frozen Soil is a must have....but there's no reason why a Warrior can't carry it along with 7 hammer skills.

There's really no Reason why I should need 12 Marksmanship, 12 Beast Mastery, Kindle Arrows, Read the Wind, Favorable Winds, and Penetrating Attack just to do less damage than a Warrior with 12 Hammer Mastery attacking. (psssst, exaggeration. It's to get a point across).

I understand why they wanted to make some classes "support" classes, but with GW's cross classing there's no reason for it. Double so when MONKS are better tanks and heavier damage dealers than Rangers/Necros/Mesmers. That's just plain bogus. If a freling HEALER class can spec into a damage dealer by getting ONE attribute up to 12+, then there's no reason why I should need to get TWO up to 12+ just to be worse at it.

The only ADVANTAGE I've actually found to being a Ranger in PvP, is that most people don't care about you. Which means that I can walk past an attacking team in the Tombs and attack (usually failing to kill) their priest unopposed. Not exactly effective, but really irritating.