State of Ranger in spvp and wvw

[Sansar.1302]

Been playing wvw and spvp since month one when game came out and this is the weakest ranger ever have been in those modes.

Ranger might be the weakest class in wvw now and this is for a class that is mostly is not welcome in wvw grps.

Where the top ones are more than welcome in wvw grps ( guardian , necro and elementalist )

Edited December 30, 2023 by Sansar.1302
a missing word

[BumboJumbo.1308]

Support druid is sought after in wvw groups

Any other elite spec for ranger is not welcome in wvw groups unless it's for guild v guild reasons.

[Mell.4873]

On 12/30/2023 at 1:44 PM, Sansar.1302 said:

Ranger might be the weakest class in wvw now and this is for a class that is mostly is not welcome in wvw grps.

Where the top ones are more than welcome in wvw grps ( guardian , necro and elementalist )

First Ranger is fine in sPvP.

Seems like your focus is WvW so my question is who is gatekeeping groups from Rangers. 

 

In fact I would say Rangers has some great options for WvW Zergs.

Druid is amazing at engaging and chasing targets. It can be a little weak on drawn out clashes but if they hit and run you will eat half the zerg with number of roots you can apply. 

Untamed has alot of clash potential with its many superspeed applications and stability/stun breaks. It also works really with quick draw plus double ambushes, being able to chain attacks in quick succession like Barrage with Fireworks Relic. 

Soulbeast is the similar with the added bonus of Staff. Soulbeast is one a few professions who have a shareable boon that is different (stances). Pair this with Solar Beam and you have a potent Poison/Bleed machine cutting through every barrier in the game. 

Edited January 5 by Mell.4873

[Mell.4873]

11 minutes ago, BumboJumbo.1308 said:

Support druid is sought after in wvw groups

Any other elite spec for ranger is not welcome in wvw groups unless it's for guild v guild reasons.

Again who is gatekeeping to this extent, never had anyone say anything except requiring you to follow the zerg to be let in.

Stance sharing Soulbeast should be fine in a Zerg especially if they use Staff. 

Edited December 30, 2023 by Mell.4873

[Gotejjeken.1267]

10 minutes ago, Mell.4873 said:

First Ranger is fine in sPvP.

😂

I tell you; your takes are so fire--one day you gotta get something to record with to show the world.  

[Mell.4873]

21 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

😂

I tell you; your takes are so fire--one day you gotta get something to record with to show the world.  

I mean I'm gold 3 and I use an Axe Ambush Ranger. The only nerf to Ranger recently was the Soulbeast burst build....

I don't think many Druids or Untamed were spamming Smokescale smoke in sPvP. 

[Sansar.1302]

1 hour ago, Mell.4873 said:

I mean I'm gold 3 and I use an Axe Ambush Ranger. The only nerf to Ranger recently was the Soulbeast burst build....

I don't think many Druids or Untamed were spamming Smokescale smoke in sPvP. 

Gold 3 is not what you should base ballance around since most there is not good at all.

Smokescale lost its cc thats a huge nerf and it is quite recent.

Edited December 30, 2023 by Sansar.1302
where not finished writing

[Mell.4873]

23 minutes ago, Sansar.1302 said:

Gold 3 is not what you should base ballance around since most there is not good at all.

Smokescale lost its cc thats a huge nerf and it is quite recent.

I never used it so hense why it didn't affect me. The removal of Fervent Force had a much bigger impact on my gameplay. 

Gold 3 is also the top 250 ranked players. Sure some are at the level but don't play regularly so the don't get placed, like myself.

[BumboJumbo.1308]

17 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

Again who is gatekeeping to this extent, never had anyone say anything except requiring you to follow the zerg to be let in.

Stance sharing Soulbeast should be fine in a Zerg especially if they use Staff. 

Whenever I join a squad with proper subgroups, and while I'm using anything other than a druid, I'm put with the other rangers/thieves. 

If I joined discord that might be different. But no one cares or wants rangers other than druids. 

Niche situations don't count.

[Psycoprophet.8107]

I donno I think us rangers can make the class stay viable even with the loss of cc on smokey. I've been combining smokey with gazelle and using gazelles knockdown to some success, obviously not as dependable as smokey and still lose slb merged knockdown which sucks. I honestly think nerf to smokey would have been fine if it was just the unmerged knockdown removed as ranger has other pets for cc. Anet should have left the merged knockdown in on slb as its was pivotal to landing worldly impact and other burst skills, removing it really interrupted power slb burst flow. Ranger has ok team play in zergs with druid and has good roam builds on all its specs so things could be worse. 

Sad thing is all things considered there are still non ranger players who think ranger specs are still op somehow.

Edited December 31, 2023 by Psycoprophet.8107

[Mell.4873]

51 minutes ago, BumboJumbo.1308 said:

Whenever I join a squad with proper subgroups, and while I'm using anything other than a druid, I'm put with the other rangers/thieves. 

If I joined discord that might be different. But no one cares or wants rangers other than druids. 

Niche situations don't count.

Maybe but again I have never encountered it. There are plenty of amazing builds on Ranger especially since Staff is available. 

Longbow + Staff is an amazing on Soulbeast or Untamed for Zergs.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

17 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

Gold 3 is also the top 250 ranked players. Sure some are at the level but don't play regularly so the don't get placed, like myself.

Actually placing carries merit though--you can play your placements and end up in say mid plat 1, but at the end of season (120-150 games) may end up in g2 or lower.  Just holding onto a ranking by not playing is same as decay dodging and alt'ing; it isn't really a good comparison of skill.

I have 150 games played myself this season and hovering at ~1390 only playing Druid--but that doesn't mean Druid is good.  It just means I'm good at the particular Druid build I play.  

19 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

I don't think many Druids or Untamed were spamming Smokescale smoke in sPvP. 

Considering the casual uses metabattle and even at higher levels (meaning people like Boyce used some variant of it) this build was meta before the smokescale KD nerf:

Untamed - LB/GS Untamed Marksman - MetaBattle Guild Wars 2 Builds

Only Druid doesn't take Smokescale because Celestial Shadow exists.  

Anyway, if we want to latch on to anything, then for my money Druid probably is the best of the ranger specs right now--anyone who learns it can play it in probably g1-g2 (provided you can learn to regularly stall nodes) and the support version did appear in EU's AT for the winning team.  Can also use it in group WvW, endgame instanced content, to be immortal in the open world / any t1 fractal that doesn't require multiple people and all dungeons.

But, for a lot of that it requires an investment into learning pretty much every mechanic in the game, and that doesn't scream 'good' to me.  Not by GW2 standards where you can just go to mesmer or engi if you like complexity and perform a lot better, or go to necro / guard if you don't like complexity and perform a lot better.  Ranger is kind of stuck with Warrior in the 'we don't know what the hell to do with you' bucket, BUT we don't have a bladesworn or condizerker type spec anymore after 10 or so nerfs in the past few years.

[BumboJumbo.1308]

2 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

Maybe but again I have never encountered it. There are plenty of amazing builds on Ranger especially since Staff is available. 

Longbow + Staff is an amazing on Soulbeast or Untamed for Zergs.

"There are plenty of amazing builds" Where are they then? Don't you think metabattle, gw2mists, hardstuck or guildjen would suggest untamed/soulbeast builds if that were the case?

(to be fair guildjen does have a zerg soulbeast build, but it's considered 'good' which is the lowest tier compared to 'great' then 'best')

[Mell.4873]

1 hour ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Actually placing carries merit though--you can play your placements and end up in say mid plat 1, but at the end of season (120-150 games) may end up in g2 or lower.  Just holding onto a ranking by not playing is same as decay dodging and alt'ing; it isn't really a good comparison of skill.

I have 150 games played myself this season and hovering at ~1390 only playing Druid--but that doesn't mean Druid is good.  It just means I'm good at the particular Druid build I play.  

Considering the casual uses metabattle and even at higher levels (meaning people like Boyce used some variant of it) this build was meta before the smokescale KD nerf:

Untamed - LB/GS Untamed Marksman - MetaBattle Guild Wars 2 Builds

Only Druid doesn't take Smokescale because Celestial Shadow exists.  

Anyway, if we want to latch on to anything, then for my money Druid probably is the best of the ranger specs right now--anyone who learns it can play it in probably g1-g2 (provided you can learn to regularly stall nodes) and the support version did appear in EU's AT for the winning team.  Can also use it in group WvW, endgame instanced content, to be immortal in the open world / any t1 fractal that doesn't require multiple people and all dungeons.

But, for a lot of that it requires an investment into learning pretty much every mechanic in the game, and that doesn't scream 'good' to me.  Not by GW2 standards where you can just go to mesmer or engi if you like complexity and perform a lot better, or go to necro / guard if you don't like complexity and perform a lot better.  Ranger is kind of stuck with Warrior in the 'we don't know what the hell to do with you' bucket, BUT we don't have a bladesworn or condizerker type spec anymore after 10 or so nerfs in the past few years.

Im not to sure how you get placed on the leader board. I play 1-2 games each day but I'm not in there.

Problem with smokescale on anything other than Soulbeast is it has the tendency to die. Unless you pair it with something like a turtle you will end up petless. On Untamed this is the worst case scenario. 

I go Turtle and Wolf so pretty close to the template. 

[Mell.4873]

1 hour ago, BumboJumbo.1308 said:

"There are plenty of amazing builds" Where are they then? Don't you think metabattle, gw2mists, hardstuck or guildjen would suggest untamed/soulbeast builds if that were the case?

(to be fair guildjen does have a zerg soulbeast build, but it's considered 'good' which is the lowest tier compared to 'great' then 'best')

Don't rely on Websites. They vary rarely iterate on what already exists. 

The one shot Soulbeast was in the game along time before anyone noticed. It was essentially got popular from twitch streamers. 

I have seen a few templates on YouTube and Twitch with my suggested set up of Longbow and Staff. I can even let you know one I run at the moment. 

Staff Carrion Soulbeast, I use Demon Empress Relic and try push out a continuous stream of conditions in a short amount of time through barriers. Soulbeast along with Poison master can get up to 3k ticks of both poison and bleed and it is hard to cleanse. 

Edited December 31, 2023 by Mell.4873

[Gotejjeken.1267]

9 minutes ago, Mell.4873 said:

Im not to sure how you get placed on the leader board. I play 1-2 games each day but I'm not in there.

My only follow-up here is if you confidently state things like 'ranger is fine in sPvP'...you should know how the leaderboards work and how the Top 250 work, how AT's work--how the things they balance around works.

Also, about websites, the GW2 ones do a decent job of keeping up with the meta. For sPvP, Metabattle for instance earlier in the year listed teleburst untamed when it had no animation (meta with Drake/Smokescale), then when that was nerfed, then sword was buffed, then burst SLB (meta with Boar/Smokescale) until it was nerfed, and now only LB/GS untamed is back under 'good' as ranger is firmly out of any known meta.

Snowcrows is also super up to date with instanced PvE stuff.

[Mell.4873]

25 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

My only follow-up here is if you confidently state things like 'ranger is fine in sPvP'...you should know how the leaderboards work and how the Top 250 work, how AT's work--how the things they balance around works.

Also, about websites, the GW2 ones do a decent job of keeping up with the meta. For sPvP, Metabattle for instance earlier in the year listed teleburst untamed when it had no animation (meta with Drake/Smokescale), then when that was nerfed, then sword was buffed, then burst SLB (meta with Boar/Smokescale) until it was nerfed, and now only LB/GS untamed is back under 'good' as ranger is firmly out of any known meta.

Snowcrows is also super up to date with instanced PvE stuff.

I mean I should be there but I'm not. The internal logic is unknown I guess. 

This is from the wiki which is not true for me "In order to be ranked on the leaderboard a minimum of 10 games need to be played."

 

In regard to the build websites. It is hit or miss if something is on there is good. I think there is a lengthy approval process on most of them so you need some level of concession from the audience. Honestly I looked around for Staff Untamed builds. They all run Dagger Dagger, wierd. 

[Mell.4873]

Oh I will add some contexts to staff. This is a WvW thing not conquest. 

Edited December 31, 2023 by Mell.4873

[Mell.4873]

@Gotejjeken.1267 Meh I'm not really adding much at this point, but I'll show some receipts of my Rank as a Ranger.

https://imgur.com/a/JbsisG0

I just read on my own screenshot I need to play 135 games to be on the leaderboard, so I guess that has not happened.

Edited December 31, 2023 by Mell.4873