Ranger Blues

As a primary ranger that has been playing R/Me and R/Mo since release, I can tell you that I have found it more usefull than any other class in the game.

Here is a build I usually use as a R/Mo:
Dual Shot/Troll Unguent/Kendle Arrows/Rebirth/Melandru's Resilience/distracting shot/dust trap/choking gas.

the main attribute points for this build I have 16 wilderness survival and 13 marksmanship (does more dmg than ppl think with higher lvls).

Basically my strategy is to try and get hexed and riddled with conditions as much as possible without dieing then use Melandru's Resilience (adds +2 health regeneration and +1 energy regeneration for EVERY hex and condition you have on for X amount of seconds) then combine it with troll and things will have one hell of a hard time killing you. All I have to say is that its really fun soloing gates of kryta with this build, I get about 3K gold per run.

As a hardcore R/Mo user, I've gotten past all the foolishness people say about how Rangers are a second-rate class, knowing fully well that my Ranger is well-equipped to deal with anything GW could possibly throw at me. With my pet tanking for me (She's a hearty stalker, she tanks well) I just kick back, activate Ignite Arrows, Tiger's Fury, launch a quick poison arrow then a dual shot, and let the good times roll. Hell, with Storm Chaser and Troll Unguent in the right places, I can even serve as a halfway decent runner. Simply because people don't accept how good they are, doesn't mean true Ranger users don't know how to prove it. ^_^

Viva La Rangers.

Well, I followed through on my call for rangers tonight. My E/N friend and I went with Lina, Mhenlo, 3 Rangers and a Necro through Ring of Fire.

BEST GROUP I HAVE EVER BEEN IN. PERIOD.

One ranger even lagged out and yet we had no significant problems. The Mursaat Monk boss was quite the pain in the butt, though.

I'd party with any of them again in an instant.

I learned to respect rangers when i was doing a mission in the jungle with my Ele/Mo. it was me and the rest of the group was rangers. We did pretty good. Then i started my own ranger...and im stuck in the desert. ive been there for the last 4 days and the only groups i get are either horrible or disband after one try.
But just wait till ring of fire....my time will come.

These people give us rangers a bad name. Anyone with basic math skills can look at the pets skills then compair them to the bow skill equivilant and clearly see that 90% of the time pet skills have lower recharge and energy cost.

I always have at least a 12 BM when i bring my pet into a mission even though I get told by loads of people that pets are useless. What really irritates me is that the people who say this the most are the ones with a ranger secondary that think pets are just there to look cute! I informed one tonight that a lvl20 pet with 12 BM = a max damage bow and he promptly informed me that he never cared about his pets damage, so I asked why he didnt care about nearly doubling his DPS. I never got an answer.........

Do it! Better yet, do it with 6 rangers, Lina and Mhenlo, it will work fine if the rangers take skill/spell disrupters with them.

This is how I got into a party for Abaddon's Mouth with 6 rangers and 2 henchy monks. When I arrived at the mission post, for some strange reason, about 90% of the Pugs were rangers. So I shouted "hey, so many rangers, how about an all ranger party" and suddenly 5 other rangers clicked on me. Off we went! No one had a pet, so actually we had no tanks! But it worked fantastic!

Yes, wow, concussion shot is neat if you understand it! I took it out for some SF farming last night and at first I thought, what the heck, its not working, the guy is casting spells anyway. But then I realized that all the spells were being interrupted, not by our party mesmers, but because of the dazedness! It was great!

Had a great time as ranger in SF last night. First went out with 5 henchies and as luck would really have it, found 2 green items outside the furnace! Usually the henchies suck in all my green items, but this time I got two! Then went out with two friends (mesmers) and 4 henchies, and we found two more greens despite having so many henchies in the group.

But back to the point: rangers. I went out with a couple of traps and this was really helpful in SF. The mesmers handled the spell disrupting for me, so I could concentrate on blinding and setting traps. During a battle, I used throw dirt to blind a bunch of warriors, then set fire trap right at their feet! Since they were blinded, they couldn't really disrupt my trap setting.

Our two henchy warriors died countless times during this farming trip. But that is why I love going out as ranger with henchy warriors instead of PUGs. If they were real warriors, not only would the teamwork most likely not have functioned as well, but the warriors would have gotten pissed off after the 1st or 2nd death and left the group. Good old Devona and Thom don't seem to mind at all, and like ranger pets, they go after who we ask them to.

Edit: BTW I can recommend using a part henchy team for SF farming. Night before I went out with 5 or 6 different all PUG teams, and each time first one, then another, and then again another left the group for some reason or another. This became really frustrating, and so I decided for now on to SF farm only with friends and henchies.

Lol your probably not using your W/Mo or E/Mo properly then.

Dont get me wrong I dont dislike rangers in any way in fact Im starting a new ranger character soon.

I've played a Mesmer for ages, never really had any issues getting onto teams for missions. Trying to get onto teams for SF and UW etc... is a nightmare, so I sympathise with the plight of Rangers.

My stunningly unsubtle tactic is to team up with one of me monk chums and then we come as a pair.

I think the reason for the ignorance it is that the farming teams have a very specific idea of what the want. Tank, damage and healers, the "support" classes don't get much of a look in. A lot of what a Rangers/ mesmers do isn't very visable (who will notice that Empathy has been dumped on someone?) I mean it's hard to miss a meteor storm, really.

I have made a ranger in PvE twice. The first time I deleted the ranger because I thought it wasn't that fun. Later on I found out how fun a ranger can become later within the game, so I made a new ranger. Later on I just got rid of it and deleted it. I had gotten them both drok armor too. I think rangers are boring in PvE, but I always play as a trapper/spiker ranger in PvP. *It all depends on what class you like... anyone can make a class shine if they want them too...

If any rangers are having a tuff time finding a group for anything after dragons lair, hit me up in game im usually on after 600 pm pst. And my guildies are always on we usually only accept rangers mesmers and ele in our groups anyways, so hit us up! We like party.

ign: maximus aragonist

I got kicked by a million PUGs trying to beat the game with the ranger... I ended up beating all the more difficult missions with henchies. GC + winter in the last mission makes it VERY easy.

Yesterday our guild started a group with 6 rangers... alesia and lina... It was great! We did a couple of the South Shiverpeak missions. It was no sweat.

Today when I signed on my monk... I spawned in TOA... I immediatly received a blind invite to join a group consisting of 6 W/mo's and 1 Mo/W.... Ummm... ill pass on this one....

Groucho Marx once said something to the tune of "any club that would have me as a member I wouldn't want to be a member of". And so it is with many of the SF/UW/FOW or other parties in GW. A lot of the parties of players that do not want rangers or mesmers would probably not be much fun to play in anyway for the ranger and mesmer. Went to SF with friends last night, and since none of my friends care to play warrior we needed to take some unknowns with us. One of them was ok but the other acted as if he was doing us a favor and ended up charging off on his own all the time.

The point: If you can't get into a party as ranger, maybe its not you, but rather all the people forming these parties are not the type of player you want to play with anyway. So try to form your own parties.

The power of rangers can be seen in UW. Big teams of Warriors and whatever bulk up and then get wiped out, but a team of 3 Trappers can clean out UW.

I love rangers, my first character was a ranger. I even made a friend once when I was in thunderhead by standing up for a ranger when someone was saying that they suck. I have to admit, of all the missions, rangers seem to never get picked there while monks recieve a billion invites as soon as they appear. I know first hand though that a ranger in the righ hands can be just what a party needs. Really the formula for any good party tends to have one of each proffesion. It is the combined partial strengths that bring true power!

This is probably not only limited to rangers. I doubt if a big team of warriors without other support will fair as well as a party with less warriors and a mix of other supportive classes. An example of this is blinding applied by air elementalists, rangers, or mesmers. Or weakening applied by air elementalists or necros. Or attack slowing applied by necros or water elementalists. Etc. etc. Question is, how many warriors realize this, or realize that they can do well with other help besides the more obvious fire nuking.

But rangers are special in what the trapping groups can do on their own.

ah wisely said

and yea warriors will never realize anything about ofher profs.

i have played as a w/mo since the first day that i got the game. but all i have to say a/b rangers is one thing.

UW trap group.

omfg

my bro goes to the UW all the time in a trap group all the time so i sit there and watch him. omg it is amazing. to see all that dmg pop up and just watch the guys keel over dead due to teh abundance of traps. wow. its amazing. im workign on making a ranger to do taht in pve but interuput in pvp. but wow rangers def have impressed me greatly.

I think the real answare here is to join a guild, I know by talking to other people on our guild that they had said they also had a hard time until they joined. just a tip for joining a guild you should not have to pay to join, even though a guild might have 50 people on it's team, that dosn't make it a better guild. Try to get to know the officers they are the leaders, so if they are honest and online playing a lot then it is easy to get good help don't be afraid to ask help on quest or missions everyone started out at a level 1 and no one that I know has made it through the game alone. Not everyone who gets invited on a guild is a good honest player. It's up to the team members to help by letting the officers know if there is any problems with other team mates. I think that you will find that there are a lot of guilds out there with good team mates and officers that you won't be spending a lot of time looking for groups to do missions. Well I hope this helps! :-) (The Bears)

I haven't played PvE much lately but I swear there are SOO MANY Rangers in PvP Random/Team.

I prefer having Rangers on my team than warriors. Most Rangers are more effective than W/Mo IMO. In the beginning, I feel every class is good but I am really starting to believe warriors have less advantage in random/team.

I must be extremely lucky. I have Never been kicked or not accepted by a group. My one and only char since the beginning is a R/e with a /Mo optional second. I am a mature (ahum) player, and have concentrated on this one char. I explore every aspect that I can.
My 2 cents. Rangers have been designed by Anet to be a class that takes what is seemingly and obviously more time to master its affectiveness.
This is the root of all complaints. All the other proffesions seem to "mature" quicker in their skills at lower levels. At least this is what I have come to understand by many many hours of reading.

Try to advertise that you are a beast master and need a Group. lol What's the chance of you being invited?

That's my experience with PvE so far. I never tell them I am BM. I just tell them I am Ranger. And if they ask what kind of Ranger I am, I told them "does it matter?"

I have. Maybe there are places where its more acceptable than others to load BM build.
My Snow wolf, "mange" is great. A bit on the dissobidient side hahaha

I duuno.

RAngers are Awesome, I like archers tho something i just like. I am making me a new ranger at the moment actually a R/Mo but anyohw yeh join a guild that supports rangers, in my guild alone we have many rangers and they are way handy. Help alot as disrupting and poisoing traps etc.

First off, hi all. I actually joined this forum to reply to this thread. lol

My first character was a ranger, choosing beast mastery even before leaving pre-sear. This was back when the game was first released. The difficulty of getting into groups was not a bother for me at first. I just grabbed henches and went on my merry way. I finally had a friend who bought the game and I paused my ranger character until they could catch up.

It was a bit discouraging when she kept getting invites to groups (an ele) and I wouldn't get any. But not to discouraging. I continued using henchies all the way through to ring of fire, even on THK.

I get to ring of fire and all of a sudden everyone is asking for a ranger with winter...hmm...what's a ranger to do. I grabbed the henchies like usual and did the mission. lol.

If any of you need help in a mission because you aren't able to find a group that will let you join, or you need to fill out a group you are starting, PM me in game. ign: Garreth MacLeod

My ranger/beastmaster and warrior have finished the game and I've a monk at henge of denravi.

Garreth... you are absolutly right... If your a ranger and you can't get a group... Just use Henchies. IMO... Rangers are the best at commanding henchies around. Im a very experienced PVE player. I completed the game with 4 chars. So now I love to help people get through tough missions such as THK. I just pretty much take 6 henchies and my ranger and run them through!

Alesia and Lina FTW!

I think in most cases, Fighter and Brawler can tank just as well as most W/Mo. lol

My first character was a ranger because I get a Ithas bow since I pre-ordered the game. I never used the bow but I loved my ranger. My, used to be, friend kept saying rangers suck and blah blah blah. I told him go play a ranger before saying that and then he told me he did and it sucks. Unfortunatly he sucks at playing ranger and lies a lot. I over ranked him in the guild and I guess he got mad and left.

Whenever I PvE I always use henches and they are definetly smarter than random pug. It might take time for some missions but it's worth it to only do it once than multiple times.

I feel pretty strongly about this issue, and countless posts like these have been popping up absolutely everywhere almost ever since the game even got released. I actually think that there's a very valid reason for the W, Ele, Mo, groups to be so prevailent in the PvE game (much to the chagrin of countless R's, N's, and Me's out there). The reason is because this group combination can be highly efficient at achieving the ultimate objective virtually all the battles in the PvE game (wiping out the enemy team while staying alive). I think that this is because of a very severe and fundamental design flaw in the game.

All the classes are well balanced in PvP. I feel that all of them are useful, and a team build can be constructed based around any 1 type of profession (eg: some well known ones would include Smite Ball -- monks, Ranger Spike -- rangers, IWAY -- Warriors, Fragility -- mesmers, FoC Spike -- necromancers, Lightning Spike -- elementalists) or a combination of them. Check out the build for Esoteric Warriors posted on www.guildwars.com for example. Balanced Build, 2nd place spot, 3 weeks. A nice variety of professions are featured. Each character can serve their purpose.

My opinion of PvE is far worse though. Simply because in some cases, the monsters are just pathetically stupid (so their stupid behaviour could be exploited to perform "overly"-efficient things -- ludicrously fast and easy Area of Effect farming prior to the November update, for example), or the monsters just plain "cheat". As a result, some of the important functions that the "support" characters play, such as effective shutdown (which can greatly contribute to the ultimate objective of wiping out the enemy team while staying alive), cannot be carried out efficiently.

An example of the "cheating" that I'm referring to is a bunch of the bosses in the game having 2, or maybe even more, copies of the same skill in their skill bar. For example, you might have your mesmer cast Diversion on a monk boss that just refuses to die (like Covetina the Matron), blocking out her Orison of Healing --- but then immediately afterwards, you see her cast another one! So you diversion that one. And she casts another one, before that stupid boss finally suffers from the increased cooldown. So much for Diversion, and the mesmer, actually being able to do it's job.

Another example might be the decreased utility of air elementalists in PvE. Few can deny the effectiveness of a successful lightning spike in PvP as they often almost instantly annihilate any target that's unfortunate enough to have been hit by it. For those who don't know, Lightning Spike works in PvP by capitalizing on the fact that soft enemy targets often have only about 500 HP. Lightning Orb at lvl 15 does 100 damage with 25% armor penetration, and Mind Shock at lvl 15 does 100 damage with 25% armor penetration as well (provided you have more energy than your target). On a target with 60 armor (which will take full damage from spells), Lightning Orb will do 125 damage and Mind Shock will do 125 and land about 1 second after Lightning Orb lands if you cast them in succession. So total damage from 1 air ele is 250. Now if you have 2 air eles timing their spike at the exact same time, 500 damage, just enough to kill their target, will be done in the span of about 1 second when the spells land. Pretty much an instant kill. The problem though, is that your targets in PvE often have far more than just 500 health and even enemies that are supposed to be soft targets (eg: enemy mesmers) often have quite a bit more than just 60 armor. The result is that the potential benefits that the air ele can provide to a PvE team is less than the potential benefits that the air ele can provide to a PvP team.

These PvE things that greatly reduce the overall effectiveness of many builds and even professions, to an extent, might explain why for the past long while a lot of us have only been able to see the mundane Warrior Tank, Ele Fire Nuker, and Monk combination everywhere.

Since the game (especially the skills) was built from the ground up for PvP, I think we'd be able to experience a lot better game if they changed specific parts of the current PvE game to be more like the PvP game to better work with the game's original design structure.

(But then again, who knows, maybe we will be able to. Arena.net did mention recently that it wanted to change the PvE game to be more like the PvP game. Perhaps changes like eliminating the "cheating" that the monsters are doing and tweaking the monsters' defensive/offensive ratings, which should accomodate for more diverse groups, are what Arena.net is referring to.)

All those who says "rangers bad", "party without monks - dead party", "mesmers s*cks", "necros weak" and so on are (imho) just stupid or can't read (every skill is listed at balthazar's priest).
There is no good ar bad proffesion or character. There is only good or bad players.

About rangers.
Average damage output of my ranger (when i run dmg dealing build) is 60-80 (varies from 40 to 120) per shot to "soft" targets (necros, monks, eles, mesmers) and 20-30 to warriors and other rangers (varies from 5 to 60). Using only ranger skills. I am to lazy to tweak my build, cause it for sure can be upgraded
Does other profesions do the same dmg per one strike ?

maybe hammer warriors......i'm not sure.


warriors, elementalists and monks are considered bare necessities, yet i finished Thirsty River (after about 30+ tries) on my elementalist with a group that had 0 monks. eat that, n00b warriors.


rangers are considered useless because they supposedly cannot match the amount of damage a warrior or elementalist can put out. they supposedly cannot interrupt as well as a mesmer, either. and (obviously) they cannot heal as well as a monk. no, healing spring doesn't count.

stupid warriors.

i have to agree that is the player that sucks, not the proffesion.

i complete my Last Day Dawn quest with mesmer, necro, ranger, monk.
profession is not really important, if everyone know how to play their own proffesion

- edit -

for ranger out there , that cant find a group for mission. mayb u can try to start ur own group, i did glint mission once with all ranger and win it.

Goooo patch. E < R in many cases now. Why cast lightning orb when you can spam pretty much any ranger skill 3 times over for less mana?

I play only the monk class, and I have had a few repeat problems with rangers that I will sadly admit have made me biased.

1) They have a pet and expect me to waste my energy to heal/protect it.
2) They assume control of all 'pulls' and create dangerous situations.
3) They do not use interupts, even though this is a strength of their class.
4) A high % of the population playing this class literally has no idea what they are doing.
5) They use spirits that have negative affects for me and/or other party members (or help monsters more than our party).

However, compared to some of the tanks I've dealt with, these guys
(rangers) are saints.

As for other 'unpopular' classes such as mesmers and necromancers, I'm seeing a major rise necromancer use since I started playing this game at launch. Although, this is probably due to 'faddy' builds like batteries for FoW and minion masters for SF.

I know there are good rangers out there, I've run into a few...I think with time like many have said, if PVE becomes more and more like PVP the ranger will find a more solid role in most parties, until then I will remain skeptical about inviting them into my party until there are some more AI patches.

Nice post Hiryu, won't quote it 'cos it's quite big!

You raise a very valid point though, the simple reason support classes can'r get on teams is simply because they aren't needed. Taking along my Mesmer to SF means that the healer bosses will drop like a stone, but given that they will drop anyway with a decent couple of nukers in tow why take someone extra?

And the end of the day PvE will need to get harder to get these "less popular" classes involved 'cos they will then be needed.

Then they are a lousy beastmaster. A beastmaster should be able to keep his pet alive.

i have to say that some of my best experiences have been with rangers, theyre usually nice people and know waht theyre doing, unlike the nooblet warriors and ele's (no offense to those that play them well)

i think its ok that rangers are rare, means i have a higher chance of getting someone who knows waht theyre doing in the game

Wait we can have 6 chars now? I haven't played in a couple months, when did this happen?

Yes, nice post Hiryu.

The thing is, with a good party of players, just about ANY combination can defeat any PVE mob. Granted, some combos are not feasible, like maybe 8 healing monks, and other combos are more difficult. But you can go out with 8 rangers, for example. Or 6 rangers and a monk and anything else. Or you can go out with 6 Mesmers in the party. And you can go out with no rangers and no mesmers at all. Its just the lazy less adventuresome players who got stuck in their rut of W+E(nuke)+Mo, of which unfortunately there are many of, who seem not to want to take along R or Me in their parties.

I remember farming in SF as Mesmer with another Mesmer friend of mine. We were in a party with 3 W and 2 or 3 other characters. My friend and I casted energy surge, shatter hex, cry of frustration where one of these was doubled up with the help of arcane echo. All of these do instantaneous damage to all nearby foes, respectively 72, 104 and 37 (depending on attribute levels). Think about that: 3 warriors attracting all foes around them and 2 mesmers then casting the damage above: the warriors had little to do. And they noticed! By the end of this SF party the warriors were literally singing songs about how they loved mesmers!

The same for the situation with rangers: it is just a matter of education. The better players learn that it doesn't matter so much what the composition of the team is, as long as people play well and play well together, everything works. And different combinations make the game interesting.

A comment to Hiryu about air elementalists: if you see the air elementalist as merely a damage dealer, you have a point in what you say regarding PVE. But the real value of an air elementalist is NOT direct damage, which is not so great against high level monsters and bosses, but the secondary effects: blinding using blinding flash or glimmering mark, for example. And weakening, using enervating charge. These effects are extremely effective and good support to the rest of the team.

All you guys saying "I did a mission with six rangers and two healer henchies the other night, none of us had pets." aren't building your group right then. One of you should have played beast master, taken revive animal along with a couple of calls. Then the other rangers only have to bring charm animal, and with the help of the one beast master's calls, their pets turn into quite formidable tanks. I did Last Day Dawns the other day with 3 rangers, 1 wa/mo, 1 monk, and 1 mesmer. I switched to a beast mastery focused build and asked them to bring their pets. Nobody even came close to dying, our pets did almost all of the tanking and did a wonderful job.