Another Redundant Ranger Rework Idea

[kaan.5074]

Hello fellow Rangers,

 

For a long time we have been facing with issues regarding to Ranger's core kit and main mechanic "Pet management". In vanilla game those issues weren't as bad as now due to less teleportation and aoe/cc spam but right now entire pet mechanic and tree(a very cool and versatile concept) is just a hindarence that is not fixed/updated for current gameplay styles. Here I will tell you my personal take on how to make ranger class more fun, engaging and up to par with all gamemodes

 

In my personal opinion we can summarize problems with ranger as following:

- The theme of ranger is not embraced fully on skillset. In many PnP games or RPG's we see Ranger class as "survivalists", "pathfinders", "relentless hunters" with high tracking skills. 

- Pets are unable to be useful on current gameplay meta. In pvp mode they cant catch up players as everyone has high mobility skills, have no way to avoid so much aoe spam or tank it etc...

- Kit is missing several skills (no healing or elite signet no elite trap etc...)

 

If we come to my rework draft:

 

Rangers have deep connection with their pets in GW2 lore and they are not some mindless minions. In terms of gameplay aspect player should feel like controlling a secondary/lesser playerlike creature that can be utilized in several ways. the vanilla skillset brought us "Commands" for this but they are not really effective at bringing this experience and only useful for their buffs or cc breaks. 

 

As I want pets to be a more effective and verstaile creatures,  incorporating command like skills to their UI via seperate pet skillset will bring a much better experience. 

 

-3 utility slots for pet that can be slotted with "Command" skills. Commands skill effects will be reworked and each of them will provide the pet a traversing option. Examples:

   - "Sick em" will command pet to teleport an enemy target. They will leash on the enemy gain more damage, speed and track them(preventing stealth)

   - "Protect me" will command pet to teleport near player break the player cc and give barrier to both.

   - "Guard" will have an aoe select which will command pet to teleport the area, stay in channel and take damage on behalf of allies in AoE. Pet can get defensive buff to tank the damage better.

   - "Search and Rescue" will teleport the pet to a downed ally and rez.

 

To make these skills not op, they will have shared cooldowns giving importance to think what command to use in a fight. They cannot be stacked together.

 

With this change pets will gain a utility like slot making them a lesser playerlike companion and get necessary traversing tools to survive in high mobilityi AOE spam meta. Of course this means ranger will lose an entire skiltype in their kit. To compensate this we will add ...... nothing. Thats right!! Rangers unlike other classes will have 4 types of utility skills instead of 5 and their companions will use one lesser effective utility slot. This will give this 2 minds fighting together vibe in a much better way and make the pets a lesser degree playerlike creatures not some useless minion.

 

My other suggestions include pet skills to be used manually making it a part of core and not exclusive to Untamed. Making pet skills usable on Utamed only contradicts the name and idea of Untamed. Why do we have better pet controls when we are channeling a primal somehow corrupted energy(said by elite spec npc in echowild) to go bersek. In fact it makes more sense we lose pet control when we give this energy to pet. Also we desperately need a command to move the pet to a specific location. Right now we only have return and go to enemy. I think adding a new mechanic to "return to me" button (pressing it will make the pet return, holdin it will spawn an aoe sign. Pet will go to the aoe sign and wait there) may solve the issue in an easy way as my suggestions above add pet UI more buttons/skills.

 

I know ranger will lose so much by sacrificing command skills like this but we will put the missing skillsets to compensate.

- Ranger will get a heal signet that can do the job of "We Heal as One" (share boons),

- Elite signet that can give similar buffs of "Strength of the Pack". 

- Entangle will no longer be a "Survial" skill but an elite "Trap" skill. I cant put any connection between spawning giant vines and survival aspect of ranger. 

- Rangers will have a new Survival elite skill called "Tracking". This will put a small channel on Ranger which when completed spots the invinsiblity. I think Rangers having ways to spot people is needed for its unique "hunter" "survivor of the wild" theme and also give them a unique important role of "Tracker". The number of people spotted can be arranged along with channel to make this skill not OP.

 

This rework will also change elite spec interacitons and heres my suggesitons for them.

 

"Untamed"

- The unleash ability on pet will not change the pet skills but 3 slotted command skills. (Unleash mechanic on pets right now kills the variety the pet options provide, making them all have the same attacks that make not even slight sense for ranged pets. By changing the command utilities of pets they can still stay viable with their skillset.

- I strongly agree that pets should get a one unique unleash skill related to their archetype. Support pets should not have the same skillset with attack pets.

- Untamed players should get a good projectile denial that can cast on themselves and is that  entirely depends on pet.

- Hammers getting a unique treatment like this is confusing and clunky. There are already several ways proposed in forums. (merge the 2 stances ito a one, make the unleashan entirely seperate kit etc..) I suggest an additionl way which is keeping the mechanic similar and add several skills to other weapons. Unleash buff will change the hard cc skills into damage skills. Idea here is to make unleash mode a dps berserk like state. We wil have good damage but no cc utility on weapons.

 

"Druid"

-By design Druid elite does not have many interaction with pet. I dont think these pet changes will effect/break the spec. Of course the Elite itself need treatment but its another topic.

 

"Soulbeast"

-With the changes I proposed above soulbeast will be effected the most. I still think several methods but do not have any defined way right know.

-I dont think pet utility commands should be used on beastmode. It goes against the idea and I hate the current playstyle of Soulbeast which is erase the pet, stack all the buffs/attributes, and use the damage skills. This rework idea is to make pets relevant again and current Soulbeast playstyle is against it. I also dont think merge should be camped entirely  and be used on occasions giving additional options for player.

- Soulbeast should embrace the "stance share". This mechanic gives soulbeast a better, secure places in groups.

- Soulbeast merge mechanic can have a stacking buff which provides power to pet next time they are unmerged. Further promoting the idea of using merge/unmerge occasionaly and not camping it.

 

I know many ranger players lost trust/hope and are in desperation state thinking ANET will do nothing to fix or update the class properly(I see you "Anduriel") but dont let it stop you. This forum is to share ideas and doing brainstorm. Please tell me what you guys think and what your proposals for the class are!!

 

Thanks for anyone who spent time to read this. Have a good day 🙂

 

Edited October 3, 2022 by kaan.5074

[Beddo.1907]

12 minutes ago, kaan.5074 said:

- Kit is missing several skills (no healing or elite signet no elite trap etc...)

Every core class has 4 healing, 3 elites and 20 utility skills(except for rev). We won't remove or add them after 10 years.

27 minutes ago, kaan.5074 said:

As I want pets to be a more effective and verstaile creatures,  incorporating command like skills to their UI via seperate pet skillset will bring a much better experience. 

28 minutes ago, kaan.5074 said:

To make these skills not op, they will have shared cooldowns giving importance to think what command to use in a fight. They cannot be stacked together.

You want to give more control to pet and then make the idea unusable in practice due to balance, while also removing utility command skills from ranger itself which causes another balance shift.

34 minutes ago, kaan.5074 said:

My other suggestions include pet skills to be used manually making it a part of core and not exclusive to Untamed. Making pet skills usable on Utamed only contradicts the name and idea of Untamed. Why do we have better pet controls when we are channeling a primal somehow corrupted energy(said by elite spec npc in echowild) to go bersek. In fact it makes more sense we lose pet control when we give this energy to pet. Also we desperately need a command to move the pet to a specific location. Right now we only have return and go to enemy. I think adding a new mechanic to "return to me" button (pressing it will make the pet return, holdin it will spawn an aoe sign. Pet will go to the aoe sign and wait there) may solve the issue in an easy way as my suggestions above add pet UI more buttons/skills.

The button idea was said countless times so nothing new here.

38 minutes ago, kaan.5074 said:

I know ranger will lose so much by sacrificing command skills like this but we will put the missing skillsets to compensate.

Adding 2 skills bad for the loss of 6 isn't "compensating".

42 minutes ago, kaan.5074 said:

- Rangers will have a new Survival elite skill called "Tracking". This will put a small channel on Ranger which when completed spots the invinsiblity. I think Rangers having ways to spot people is needed for its unique "hunter" "survivor of the wild" theme and also give them a unique important role of "Tracker". The number of people spotted can be arranged along with channel to make this skill not OP.

The channel and no other effects makes this skill useless.

Aside for the Hammer, I don't like any of the Espec ideas.
(Feel free to ask me to elaborate on something.)

[kaan.5074]

Incorporating commands to the pet will reduce the number of skills ranger will have(no "we heal as one", or "strength of the pack" etc.. are gone) The skills I wrote will count to the same number of skills classes already have.

 

Commands skills wont give the control to the pet. They are already mostly pet related skills and only utilized by player via soulbeast elite. My idea is to simply give them to the pet UI via additional utility slots no dramatic change here. Commands having shared cooldown or not is a balance thing ı cannot foresee now and easily monitored by playtime.

 

Tracking skills main idea is to see stealth. Additional buffs, channel etc.. can be easily rearranged with playtime. Idea is to understanding the main theme and the main effect. Apart from other things, this will give ranger more ways to see stealth and Iam proposing wheter or not its viable to do it.

 

The proposal Iam making wont erase the commands completely. In fact wont erase anything they are doing at all. At the most basic form Iam suggesting to put some of them ınto a pet bar with slightly tweated effects while changing the others into different skilltype . Rangers will actually have more skills to use by this rework.

 

This isnt an espec idea. Its a rework idea of ranger core class mechanic. Things I wrote for especs is to argue the effects the core rework will have on them.

 

 

[Gotejjeken.1267]

Ranger is literally in a very good spot, and we still get rework pitches like this.  

Not going point by point, but the biggest issue from the OP seems to be pathing, which is probably also the only issue keeping ranger in a somewhat viable competitive state.  Sounds counter-intuitive, but if you fixed ranger pets to have an abundance of teleports or perfect tracking, the sPvP forum would have the class removed from the game.

The rest, is fine IMO.  I personally don't want more reliance on the pet itself--no more commands given to it or no more responsibilities for it.  The pet AI is a mess and at best should be used as a CC/distraction device.  

If you don't believe me on any of this, head over to the profession forum, pvp forum, or even engi forum (really most of them) and see the complaints about mech doing too much.  Because people HATE getting killed by an AI even if mech is objectively terrible in 2/3 game modes, and only passable in PvE because of rifle + mech.  

I don't want this for ranger---over the years had enough complaints and nerfs to an AI that can barely find its way up stairs and cannot cross simple gaps without taking the scenic route.  Rather not alter that so the pet becomes too good, and we're stuck on meme builds like engineers.  

[kaan.5074]

Pets dont just have pathing problem. They are unable to stay relevant to the current meta which is AoE spam/high mobility. Even with sufficient pathing they cant catch any players with so much loaded teleports/jumps on classes right now. They also die very quickly due to so much AoE. This is why ı think pets need teleport. There is no other way to make them avoid any aoe or have them actually hit enemy players.

 

We are stuck with pet mechanic period. There is no workaround to this. Entire attack buffs, traitlines, many of our kit is semi or completely reliant on pets. If they stay as cc bot it wont just reduce the pets importance. It will make many of the ranger interaction pointless, boring or non existent at all. They only managed to fix this in a way with soulbeast merge but its only one elite spec and without any workaround to the core we will stuck with same spec all the time.

 

Ranger in my opinion is in mediocre state not something I can confidently call "good". Its WvW/Spvp application is problematic. It's role in endgame pve content always have more clunky mechanics then other classes. While mechanist give alac via auto attack and renegade do it via aoe, Rangers have to slot 3 utility with certain skills, cast them on a stationary ground, watch their hp bar, watch the positions and cast their active skills with a channel. While many classes get straight teleports/jumps with current high mobility meta untamed got a teleport that can only be used on enemy engage. When other classes just cast heal/cleanse like crazy, Druid have to fill a gauge and calculate the most efficient way to use skills with it before depletion. Whatever the meta dictates, Ranger nearly always gets a more clunky or broken way to provide it unlike many other classes. 

 

I know fixing and giving more tools to pet will make the playerbase angry but with all due respect ı dont give a slight kitten. I dont give a kitten to their sensitive Ego that shatters like glass cuz they are unable to accept the reality of getting killed by AI when its the entire core class mechanic of ranger. Anet will never give a different mechanic to rangers, such rework is impossible. Players complained so much to dying range weapons and right now entire range weapon trees are unusable in WvW with so much projectile denial and useless unblockables.

 

Mechanist hate I think stem from the fact that they are not just passable, they actually dominate entire pve content right now. The reason is not that they do so much but they also do it with very easy mechanics. In my opinion they should have never given the entire pet mechanic to a class as elite especially something so versatile like engi. It breaks many trait intereactions and makes proper balancing impossible. Mechanist currently can either be op or trash because they sacrifice entire toolkit(the core mechanic of engi) for pet.

 

I dont share your optimism for ranger I think there is a serious case of mechanical malfunction in this class. But I thank you for reading my post and sharing your opinion.

[Dadnir.5038]

That made me smile a bit... Literally: "My idea is to make commands baseline."

- First of all, what you suggest is pure powercreep. It doesn't have any less of an impact on Druid than any other spec contrary to what you claim (I mean, you give baseline "search and rescue" + "Protect me!" to the Druid, how come you don't think that such a thing can't impact the ranger's healer e-spec?).

- You're not talking about CD. I mean, you can't expect those skills that you make baseline to have no CD at all, right? And if they do have CD and replace the current commands of the UI, what you suggest would hurt the ranger more than it would help him.

- You're forgeting about the shout trait and the trait Allies' aid. It might not be as important to you as the eventual impact on the various ranger's e-specs metabuilds but, nonetheless, it's still 2 dead trait slots.

 

 

[Deax.1572]

The only thing i'd wish to see for a ranger is to reduce the pet downtime from 60 to 30 seconds. 15 seconds on swap - double that if it goes down. 60 is too punishing in pvp and especially in wvw where it tends to die in 3 seconds. 

This is another reason why Soulbeast is awesome to play, it gives a work around.

[Sansar.1302]

Pet on ranger should be removed and ranger should instead get more stats

[kaan.5074]

Yes what I suggest is powercreep that other classes get with their elite spec. (15 skillkit firebrand, more skillset on weaver, an entire kit to already versatile engi so on...) We can hate powercreep all we want but this what every elite spec brings. This pure boonspam, constant AoE spam, complete projectile denial meta wont go away.

 

The vanilla classes in Gw2 already designed to be versatile as the initial advertisement of the game was to get rid of holy trinity and make all classes self sufficient. This is why adding new mechanics to them is dangerous and has potential to breaking the balance but there is no turning back now. What I say is if there is a permanent powercreep let it be fair to all classes and not just some of them. The communities suggestions to reduce this powercreep also didnt work. The supposed "tradeoff system" wasnt fair to all classes and made the elites clunky to play. (hence the reason many of them are erased with oct 4 patch)

 

No Ranger build in the game as ı know uses more than one command skill besides elite. And only ones used are either "Sick em" or "Protect Me" in utility slots. What I suggest will make all command skills relevant to the game. Due to potential powercreep my initial idea is to give them shared cooldown so if you used "protect me" you cant use "search and rescue" until cooldown wears off. We can think this as a more versitale command usage not so different from now. Imagine you can change the command in cooldown so you can use another thing but not all of it at the same time. What will the exact cooldown numbers should be I dont know we gotta see this in game first.

 

What I meant is this change wont effect Druid on mechanical level as the espec doesnt incorporate pet on its set unlike other e-spec. Yes it will get stronger with commands being a pet thing and I dont see a huge issue with druid getting buffs like this.

 

Yes command and search&rescue traits will need a rework with this. I dont know what it can be right know but I believe it can be arranged.

 

Now cooldwon reduction on pet downtime will help them when they cant initiate the target in the first place. They either cant catch up to players or die in 3 sec to all AoE spam. With less downtime right now, you will only get a pet that dies more.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

10 hours ago, kaan.5074 said:

I dont share your optimism for ranger I think there is a serious case of mechanical malfunction in this class. But I thank you for reading my post and sharing your opinion.

 

Just as a note, gotta quote me if you want me to see it (forum will notify on quote or react).  

Anyway, just curious as to what problems you feel ranger has in competitive? Surely if it's the pet itself most of that can be solved with making it have a breakbar, being unable to die, or just reducing the death timer from 60s to the normal swap CD timer of 20s or so?

If it's 'ranger as a whole', how do you explain the current flexibility of soulbeast being able to swap in or out of merge as mediocre or less than what other classes get? There are others, but that is the one I think you'll find most often now as counter argument unless anet goes and reverts it again (all depends on sPvP whether any of us like it or not).

Maybe I'm just too long in the game and have gotten too used to how ranger functions, but since they've added untamed and soulbeast I find pets far less irritating to deal with than prior.  Sure they still don't listen and have pathing issues and can get stuck in AoE forcing a swap, but every class has to have some sort of downside I guess.  

[EvilZombie.6801]

Bah bah it totally sound like mechanist a whole trait tree fully support pet system that what a ranger need

[Mell.4873]

The Command skills do get used along with pet boon sharing traits/skills. 

Command skills are some of the most unique skills in the game since for Soulbeast it unlocks whole new ways of playing especially with "Sic Em". The same thing can be said with Untamed, the cooldown for "Guard" can be lower to the duration of the 33% damage reduction so you can have permanent 50% reduction on incoming strike damage when played in combination with other Traits. If anything I think the most useless command skill is the ultimate since the elites specialisations skill normally replaces it. 

I think the simple fact that you don't use them doesn't mean they are useless.

 

Boon sharing between pet is another misconception since it actually really strong since you have another source of boons you can draw from. Then you can absorb them with   "we heal as one". 

Edited October 4, 2022 by Mell.4873

[anduriell.6280]

24 minutes ago, Mell.4873 said:

Command skills are some of the most unique skills in the game since for Soulbeast it unlocks whole new ways of playing especially with "Sic Em".

So you mean they behave like normal skills buffing the player directly. 

Command skills should be statuses on the pet which you can assign to change how the pet behaves, and only one of them can be active at any time. And they should only work on the pet so if you are a perma merged soulbeast you don't get to enjoy the commands. 

Commands work like switches and can be deactivated by reusing the skill, pet swap or pet death. CDs are greatly increased to avoid playing piano. Resounding Timbre can still reduce the CD, and apply regen and swiftness in an interval around the ranger while a command is active. 

WHaO: Pet cast some  re-balanced lick wounds on a ranger. This works so when the ranger stays in place immobile and the pet can stay close to the ranger, the pet heals the ranger in a similar fashion as lick wounds. 

Sic'em!!: Pet gets damage buff and can target invisible targets without revealing them.
If the disabling auto-attack i recommended is applied this Command can allow the pet to use it back.  The pet behaves like the current F1: pet focus in one target until it goes out of range and then pick another one within a radius of the ranger. It does not change targets unless the command is deactivated or the target is out of range or the target is defeated.
Ranger can activate other pet's Fs skills but they are always targeted on current target. If set on auto then they are cast on auto too. 

Protect Me!:  Ranger transfer damage and statuses to the pet. 

Guard!: Similar to Protect me but this command is used on an allied target. 

Strength of the pack: Pet gain back the auto-attack and always attack current ranger target (similar to how necro minions work) . Other effects can be the same. Same as sic'em ranger can activate the F skills, but the target will be always ranger's current target. 

Elite:

Search and Rescue!: Pet cast a re-balanced lick wounds on downed allies around the ranger. 

There you go, commands are now cool . Nerfing souldbeast Sic'em may need some specific buffs to some offensive skills on the soulbeast or buffing the merged bonus stats, but i don't think that should be very difficult to determine.. 

 

Edited October 4, 2022 by anduriell.6280

[kaan.5074]

"Guard" and "Search and Rescue" are indeed useless commands. There is literally no one slotting them in any mode whatsoever because we have limited utility slots and either "sick em" or "protect me" depending on the build is too important to take. "SotP" even though it has usage on some builds still not slotted very often. No druid takes it, soulbeast has "dolyak stance" untamed has "forest fortification", only maybe core rangers can use it but the problem with the game is that core class effectiveness is being diminished day by day.

 

The thing is ranger as a class is not good. "Soulbeast" is. It can be played on all modes (semi played on WvW) because it directly erases the mechanic giving everything to player which makes all the pet ai problems go away. But unless the core mechanic problems are solved Soulbeast gonna be the only spec we can reliably use or the next spec has to erase the pet similarly to SLB. This is why Untamed had a lot of negativity at release imo( at least one of the more dire reasons). People got too used to ignoring the class mechanic (Druid doesnt care pets have minimal interaction with it, SLB merges with it) they couldnt comprehend when it was finally on the spotlight again.

 

Druid has clunky support mechanics making it less desirable compared to other popular supports (Ham, Firebrand, Scrapper). Burst heal is not very useful on WvW, it's boon spam is linked to static ai spirits which is problematic in a high mobility meta both in PvE and PvP. Spirits are absolutely useless on WvW. No other support class has these restrictions and difficulty when providing boons.

 

Untamed has one broken trait (Fervent Force) and thats it. It's alac build is directly linked to this broken mechanic making the entire build useless if it cannot be abused. If Iam not mistaken even one of the devs stated that "its build for only pvp in mind and they are looking for ways to rework" Again has clunky and out of plave ideas that mashed together. Hammer gets secondary form but not other weapons, we gotta control every skill of pet(how is that related to theme of untamed and why it isnt a fix for the core itself is just too stupid in my opinion), you do elementalist like rotation and still doesnt get more effective results than other builds that do your job making the complexity useless. This spec only has one good place in the game and its sPvP thats it. Entire elite spec only has one reliable spot in one game mode.

 

Yes every class has to have a downside but the thing is its not true in this game. What is the downside of playing Engineer, or Guardian, Or Necro for example in terms of mechanical aspect? Do engineers have some sort of randomness in their toolbelt skills like we have on AI dependency on pet? Do guardian has any weirdness on their virtues or tomes? This downside or tradeoff thing in the game is not fair with all classes for a long time. 

 

I tried to fix the problems I wrote above and think Ranger class have by a new command trait rework. Druid can use pets on supportive way with it adding some slight more interactions, Untamed can finally use pets skills reliably with unleash mode as it will change the command utilities and as a core mechanic, pet will have more way to catch up the players or avoid enemy skills. Giving pet the teleport is the only way to make them semi usable, there is no better traversing option as this method is the way to ignore pathfinding AI. Giving them reduced cd on downstate wont work if they cannot avoid any aoe attack, they will just die again. Giving them immunity or defiance bar I think is an invitation to balance nightmare. They even stripped the bar from mechanist pet.

 

Of course what will happen with recent Oct 4 patch I cannot foresee. I dont think Druid will have a Stability role even with these changes and Soulbeast merge swap is the only cool change I think that can breath a little more interactivity and fun to the class.

[Mell.4873]

1 hour ago, kaan.5074 said:

I tried to fix the problems I wrote above and think Ranger class have by a new command trait rework. Druid can use pets on supportive way with it adding some slight more interactions, Untamed can finally use pets skills reliably with unleash mode as it will change the command utilities and as a core mechanic, pet will have more way to catch up the players or avoid enemy skills. Giving pet the teleport is the only way to make them semi usable, there is no better traversing option as this method is the way to ignore pathfinding AI. Giving them reduced cd on downstate wont work if they cannot avoid any aoe attack, they will just die again. Giving them immunity or defiance bar I think is an invitation to balance nightmare. They even stripped the bar from mechanist pet.

I think you should play another Class, I mean I use all the skills you listed as useless and don't want them changed.
If people run their pet into a Zergs expecting it to do something then that is there problem, I do just fine with mine.

Edited October 5, 2022 by Mell.4873

[Gotejjeken.1267]

29 minutes ago, Mell.4873 said:

I think you should play another Class, I mean I use all the skills you listed as useless and don't want them changed.
If people run their pet into a Zergs expecting it to do something then that is there problem, I do just fine with mine.

 

I agree.  If people are having trouble using pets with anything but core ranger, it is a L2P issue--have no issues roaming with them in WvW, and up to top of Gold 3 Solo Q in sPvP with Untamed and having zero issues. 

I mention core as its the hardest to keep pets alive on as your only real means is pet swap, whereas even Druid you can stealth pretty readily with CS.  

Anyway, pets literally have teleports right now if using Untamed and if not, you can use pet swap or unmerge to get them to your position--if struggling, these are all L2P issues.

Saying ranger as a class is 'not good' is objectively false though.  Ranger has builds with some of the highest PvE benchmarks, has a spec literally tailored to sPvP, and can do 90% of WvW without any issues.  The only real lacking is smashing 50v50v50 into eachother, takes a bit of thought to be useful there as Ranger is definitely not a full on zerg class.  

[Mell.4873]

24 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Saying ranger as a class is 'not good' is objectively false though.  Ranger has builds with some of the highest PvE benchmarks, has a spec literally tailored to sPvP, and can do 90% of WvW without any issues.  The only real lacking is smashing 50v50v50 into eachother, takes a bit of thought to be useful there as Ranger is definitely not a full on zerg class.  

Yeah honestly I avoid the direct smash and rather wait for the tail then go in.

I honestly find super organized Zergs the easiest to play against since I run after them and even when I go down I use Bowl of Fire Salsa to stay alive until my team rez me.