I plan to roll a Sylvari Ranger, maybe as alt, but I am still over the fence with Rangers. The pets seem to be VERY squishy, and the skills sort of boring. Also, I felt compared to the DMG output, they are too squishy. They make same dmg as Warrior, and warrior is much tougher. Any experiences with people who played Ranger at least into mid levels or something?

Opinions?

Originally posted by Elikal

I plan to roll a Sylvari Ranger, maybe as alt, but I am still over the fence with Rangers. The pets seem to be VERY squishy, and the skills sort of boring. Also, I felt compared to the DMG output, they are too squishy. They make same dmg as Warrior, and warrior is much tougher. Any experiences with people who played Ranger at least into mid levels or something?

Opinions?

Depends how you aim to play, a ranger spec'd correctly for stuns and slows for WvWvW will be much more effective than any melee class.

The pets are not weak, they are situational. I use a bear (or two) for tanking in PvE and a range-pet for the occasional zergfests.

Well, PvP is another story.

Originally posted by UsulDaNeriak

The pets are not weak, they are situational. I use a bear (or two) for tanking in PvE and a range-pet for the occasional zergfests.

Well, PvP is another story.

Exactly. Use 2 pets. You can swap them during combat before they die and it's a 15 second CD then you 1st pet is ready again. 30 seconds if you let them die. They don't really die but they hobble back and need to be ressed. I thought it was comical when my bear came back on 3 legs with his paw in the air, but I digress.

I found the Ranger to be a lot of fun, still debating if it will be my main char. Toss up between Ranger and Elementalist atm. Greatsword Rangers do very well in sPvP, as do condition builds. For W v W I prefer the Longbow.

I'm going to make Norn Ranger With Sword/dagger and longbow as an alt with a variety of pets I loved the damage I was doing in WvW with some of the escape tactics I had. 

However I decided to roll another class because I prefere others underwater combat.

I am also on the fence.

I plan to play a class for each race. And for Sylvari I found ranger to be most fitting (plants -> ranger)

Which hurts me cause i actually want to play engineer instead. I found ranger to be borderline boring in BW

watch the shortbow ranger burst:)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UcKLlg_6RI#t=0m57s

Originally posted by Aerowyn

watch the shortbow ranger burst:)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UcKLlg_6RI#t=0m57s

you noticed his life right? 

i mean... my ranger has 24k hp.....

Originally posted by CaakEE

Originally posted by Aerowyn

watch the shortbow ranger burst:)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UcKLlg_6RI#t=0m57s

you noticed his life right? 

 

i mean... my ranger has 24k hp.....

You did notice that it was the thiefs hp we saw getting burst down right?

Yup. The bears can tank like you wouldn't believe in PvE. Unless it's a case of getting swarmed by a group of mobs, I never get touched and the bears never die. I use my bears almost exclusively (amphibious ftw), save for  versus mass mob fights (centaur events, etc) where I may break out an aoe pet. But in PvP, a player isn't going to stand there hammering on your bear. That's where your dps pets come in.

I'm hearing a lot about this greatsword ranger thing. I'll have to check it out, though going melee goes against everything I love about ranger classes.

Originally posted by botarded

 

I'm hearing a lot about this greatsword ranger thing. I'll have to check it out, though going melee goes against everything I love about ranger classes.

I tinkered a lot with Longbow /Greatsword in the BWEs. This swoop is a great gap-closer and simply looks awesome. So i used the greatsword as a finisher, which made a lot of fun against single targets.

However, once swooped in range, i like to get at range again in longer fights to switch back on my longbow. And this knockback of the greatsword is rather short. And does not help, if fighting a group of mobs. So GS/LB seems not a very flexible combo to me. Perhaps greatsword plus shortbow works better. 

A lot of fights i faced became a bit crowdy soon, so i prefer to stay in range. If soloing, I also like skills on my weapons as on skill 7-8 which are some GTFOOTS-wildcard (Get the f... out of this sh...). So shortbow and longbow have this, beside the range factor, which helps too, if the $hit hits the fan. And due to the dynamic nature of GW2 Murphys Law rules in this game: If $hit can happen, it WILL happen.

But thats just me. My PvE tactics is not DPS (wether condition nor power based) or support or whatever usual build you find on the forums. Its just plain and simple: survivability.

I wish Ranger abilities were buffed and pets removed.. or an option.

in pvp pets rather crappy compared to other classes "perks"

maybe some trait for +dmg when pet is stowed away, yeah :P

I got mine to 80, then switched to a engineer ... they do pretty solid damage, but as far as what your doing in wvw, well, a barage on the zerg and backing up for a half a minute to do it again... lets face it, even if you want to get away from it, most pvp encounters is going to be a bunch of people.. you need a good mix of aoe and single target dmg to collect badages and all that jazz.. I just don't see it being worth it on the ranger, was usually bored.... 

..and I don't wanna run a trap build, pets always dead (the new patch makes that a little better anyways)

I've been wondering about my decision as my Ranger. It is the only character I've rolled and only gone to level 15.

PvE so far has been super easy mode. Story quest any everything just burst through it without paying attention. I did some WvW and it was interesting and with some of the bow abilities you could run down an opponent's health pretty quickly. Overall, not too surprising, but the pets seem fairly pointless in PvP.

I have a lvl 80 Ranger.  Odds are you are going to want to go Longbow/Shortbow rather than take a 1h+offhand or the Greatsword.  Shortbow is seriously lacking in the AoE options that Longbow provides and they mesh well together.  I know a lot of GW2 fans might not want to hear it, but the cookie-cutter builds are coming.  The other weapons aren't bad, I just think this is the best combo especially in WvWvW.  1H/2H sword, torch, and warhorn bring nothing to the table to improve the rangers kit really except Warhorn has a nice buff.  To get the most dmg out of your ranger your going to have to sacrifice some defense so avoiding melee range is best at all costs especially when you have so many kiting skills at your disposal.

Shortbow gives you a 3rd dodge through the skill assigned to "3" I don't remember it's name.  The "4" skill on Longbow has knockback.  You'll want to get the +50% endurance regen trait and you will have infinite dodges available btw the 2 regulars and one free from Shortbow.  Melee doesn't stand a chance with this build because you can kite all day and the dmg is devastating to any squishies.  You get bleed, poison, and cripple.  You want to stack bleeds since they stack in DPS rather than duration.  Poison is easy to maintain as is cripple (trait will apply to enemies below 25% HP).  In WvWvW I have gone 1v5 and defeated all 5 opponents. 

Personally I roll with: Heal As One, Muddy Terrain, Sharpening Stone, +10% Movement Sigil, Rampage as One. 

In PvP you are going to be forced into using Brown Bear pet because it has condition removal.  If you don't use said pet and don't have a partner that can remove conditions you will be forced to use a trait or skill slot for that purpose.  Kinda sad really.  Hopefully ANet tweaks this in the future because Spider pet for example goes really well with conditions builds.

Kinda rambling, but that's my 2 cents as an 80 Sylvari Ranger.