Sam's Totally Opinionated Rant on Ranger in 2015

This is a rant I've had germinating for a while now, and I'm finally taking the time to write it all down. This rant is primarily a reaction to the GW2 community at large, which is also its intended audience. This rant is totally opinionated, I'm not going to lie, and entirely based upon my personal, biased experience. It might make you mad, and if that's the case then so be it. My hope is that this rant will be received as more of a "call to change" as that is really my purpose here.

Caveat- I'm writing this in September 2015, which means it's being written before the HoT release, and the Druid specialization. Thus, everything I write here could be completely out of date in a month. Only time will tell.

Who the hell do I think I am?

I've been playing this game since day one, and ranger nearly as long (my ranger was born 9/23/2012). I've done dungeons, fractals, countless PvE events, spent an inordinate amount of time in WvW, and even done some PvP'ing (though it doesn't feel like it, I've spent most of my PvP time playing as my ranger). Additionally, I have leveled nearly every job to 80, and played extensively with each of them. It's safe to say I know this game pretty well, understand its mechanics, understand how different classes work and interact, and generally am pretty knowledgeable about much of GW2.

My ranger, specifically, is the class I've spent the absolute most time with. Ranger is my go-to job for general GW2 gameplay. It's the one I do the vast majority of PvE content with, it's my second most played WvW job, and it's my top PvP job. I've spent a great deal of time studying its mechanics, understanding its skills, and building the best gear and traits for it.

What's the problem?

There's really two problems I'd like to address:

Most rangers suck
Most everyone else hates rangers, probably because of item 1.

Most rangers suck

According to the most recent GW2 census data, ranger is the second most popular job in the game (behind warrior). This means there are a lot of rangers out there, and that it is highly likely you will encounter rangers on a daily basis.

Unfortunately, most rangers suck, and give the few good rangers a bad reputation. This is not a universal suckage, sucky rangers are not all created equal, rather rangers suck in varying degrees.

Most rangers suck in the following ways:

They Brownbear/Longbow it.
Classically, most rangers start the game with a bear pet and a longbow, and they stick with that combination without doing any additional research. That's not to say the bear and the longbow are without their uses (in fact, as we'll see below, the longbow is one of ranger's best weapons), it's just that many if not most rangers use them with little regard to alternatives.
ZERK ALL THE THINGS!
This is, perhaps, a more general problem of the GW2 player base itself (as it's near universal to hear people say that berserker builds are the only way to go), but it's more exposed in the ranger ranks due to fact that it can greatly gimp them in many cases.
Ingoring the pet.
Many rangers I've asked said that they felt their pets were largely useless, and they just ignored them. This is absolutely terrible since, if you actually research it, you'll find pets provide useful and versatile skills.
Tanking pets.
Other rangers quickly discover that pets like bears can sustain damage better than they can, and decide having their pet tank is the best use of them. I've said it before and I'll say it again, rangers should absolutely not be in the business of tanking!
They limit their weaponry
Most rangers I've encountered have found one weapon combination they like, and then stick with that and never deviate. Greatsword/Shortbow, Axe/Longbow, Sword/Greatsword- it doesn't matter the combination, if you're not diverse with your weapons then, chances are, you don't really understand them.
They don't understand their skills, and how their skills interact with others.
This is, perhaps, the most egregious. They routinely fire knockbacks without realizing this fucks up other players attacks. They drop healing spring on top of fire fields. They only run passive signets, and never activate them. They don't know first fuck about combos and finishers (again, this could be said for most GW2 players).

Most players hate rangers

This actually pisses me off more than the general lack of skill I encounter in most rangers. There's this near universal hatred for all things ranger. People think rangers can't deal damage, can't work in dungones, can't work in WvW, are useless in parties and during hardcore events, and exist only to annoy everyone else with knockbacks. While this hatred probably stems from the first problem (most rangers suck) above, it's grown to completely batshit crazy, irrational levels.

No knockbacks allowed.
Dear Warrior,
Yes, I agree having a mob knocked out of your space right when you fire off Hundred Blades is fucking annoying, but don't think that this makes knockbacks a useless and annoying skill. There are absolutely vital moments when knockbacks are key to success. For example, during the Prevent skritt from stealing supplies event, being able to push a supply-carrying skrit away from their hidey-hole is terribly useful.
Rangers don't deal enough damage
Rangers have phenominal spike damage potential between their longbow and greatsword skills. Add to this high precision and you can score criticals on nearly every single hit.
Rangers are shitty at condi
While we're no necro, rangers have some great condition skills. Bleeding, poison, burning, vulnerability, cripple, daze, stun, chill- we can do just about everything.
As far as boons we grant fury, might, stability, invisibility, reflects and have multiple abilities which can cure allies of various conditions.
Pets are useless aggro magnets
There is a modicum of truth to this, Anet really didn't give us as much control over our pets as we would like. That being said, smart rangers know how to mitigate the risks. They stow the pet when running through precarious zones or they set the pets on passive (no auto-attack). Additionally, there are some awesome skills that the pets can do which will really help in a diverse set of situations.
Down with healing spring!
I actually encountered this last night- and another ranger on the team backed them up. Somewhere, somehow, many players have heard that healing springs can be harmful. They ususally don't understand why they can be harmful, nor do they understand the context of when they can hinder things (they can negate fire fields, that's about it). From this small seed of misinformation grows a mighty tree of healing spring hate. This is especially troubling since healing spring is the best AOE healing in the game and lays down a water field!

Sam's 4 Step Plan For Ranger Greatness

So what do I recommend for making your Ranger the best he/she can be? Take a seat, Bucko, you're about to be edumacated.

Never Go Full Zerktard

Over the years I've spent an ungodly amount of time experimenting with, tweaking, and completely changing my gear. I've tried everything from full zerk, to full assassins, sinister to sentinal, rampagers, celestial (heh) and everything in between. You know what the one big take-away I've learned from all this? Your power doesn't mean dick if you can't hit the mob.

See, this is something where the old FFXI community radically differs from the GW2 community. Back in FFXI, players quickly realized that DEX (the attribute that affected accuracy as well as criticals for most melee) was, in many ways, more important than STR (the attribute that's closest to what GW2 calls "Power"). In GW2, on the other hand, people discovered that for many classes, Power rules. They then assumed it meant that Power was, universally, the best thing to boost in the game. This couldn't be further from the truth.

Full zerk Rangers, pay special attention to your attacks. You'll notice two things: 1) You'll see you miss a lot, and B) You'll see you have many glancing hits.

Glancing is a special mechanic in GW2 where you only deal half of your expected damage, and your chances for critical hits are eliminated. Glancing is influenced by certain status effects (such as blindness or weakness) as well as the delta between your level and the mob's level. Glancing is mitigated by your precision. This means that, the more precision you have, the less chance your shots will glance. Precision also affects your critical chance (with Ferocity affecting your critical max along with Power).

Full zerk means you will be mostly losing your damage potential due to not being able to reliably hit your foe. It will also mean fewer criticals, which, again, means less damage.

In all of my experimentation (which included DPS/Damage parsing with, potentially bannable parsing tools) I found that full zerk gave me the least DPS compared to the other options (such as full assassins).

Now, I should point out that this was only for my Ranger. I didn't do similar tests with my other jobs. Thus, I can only speak towards Ranger optimization.

So Precision is key, but is Precision-only the best route? Obviously it's not, or else I would have just stopped above :-) It turns out that a mix of Precision, Power and Ferocity (having different gear which maximizes different combinations of them) winds up giving the best DPS for Ranger.

What's my take-away then? You should focus on Precision first, getting your accuracy up there, then focus on Power and Ferocity. Personally, I have Precision as the primary attribute on three of my main armor slots, and Power as the primary attribute on the remaining ones. Then, for asccessories I, honestly, swap Power/Precision builds based upon what I'm doing and what weapons I'm using.

Then, for my weapons, I upgraded with stats most appropriate for that weapon.

Longbow is all about spike damage, it fires relatively slowly, and brings with it few conditions. So my longbow's primary sigil is superior perception (pretty damned cheap) and secondary is superior of strength. At full stack, my precision is insanely high and my critical chances are nearly 100%. The strength sigil then gives me might on criticals, meaning I pile on even more damage.
Greatsword is also all about spike damage, however I found that its accuracy wasn't as lacking as longbow (my base precision from other gear was plenty to ensure mostly criticals). Thus, for my greatsword I slotted in superior bloodlust for the primary and superior fire for the secondary (heh, honestly, the secondary is a personal choice of mine as I love landing fire blasts on criticals, there might be something better to use here). Getting a good, solid, baseline for damage generally in this game is hard. That being said, I've found that during the phase of Tequatl after the Megalasers fire, when everyone is stacked on the leg and attacking, is a pretty reliable place to determine your consistent damage for a given weapon. The reason for this is because you will invariably have full stacks of might and fury with a fire field in place for the duration of the attacks. In this situation, I've found that, with my Ranger using greatsword, I can consistently land hits in the 15k-25k damage range (variation due to cricticals, example screenshots here and here). This is completely off-the-chain, and a real testiment to the power of Ranger's greatsword.
Axe is all about bleeding, chill, weakness, and might stacking. When off-hand, it provides a stellar reflect skill. For my main-hand axe I have superior sigil of bloodlust, and for my off-hand axe I have superior sigil of agony (for bleeding duration). Axe in your main hand is also a phenominal way to tag lots of mobs.
Sword is all about rapid DPS, cripple, and might for you and your pet. Again, I use bloodlust here.
Shortbow is another solid condi-weapon for Rangers, though, I'll admit, I don't like it as much as I like axe. Bleed and stun only trigger when hit from the side, poison volley has a pretty narrow cone of damage, and the evasion move seems situationally usefull at best. That being said, a lot of Rangers love shortbow (and the legendary shortbow is epic), so it is a totally solid weapon. As for sigils, honestly, I'm torn. I've tried both corruption and accuracy on it, and have seen great results with both. For the secondary, I like agony simply because it boosts the bleed, but seeing as how bleed is harder to trigger with shortbow, I'm not 100% sold on it.
Warhorn is a great utility off-hand weapon for Ranger. I usually combine it with axe (when I don't need reflect off-hand). You get a solid bleed attack (which greatly boosts axe's bleed) and a spectacular boost skill which grants fury, might and swiftness to you, your pet, and your allies. For sigil, I like agony (again) as that boosts the bleeding you get from axe and warhorn.
Torch is a weapon I'm a recent convert to. It seems off with its mismatch of a ranged attack (number 4) with a local-AoE (number 5), so I don't like it combined with a ranged main-hand weapon like axe. That being said, coupled with a sword it becomes a monster. For sigil, I like superior sigil of fire, though, I'll admit again that this is a personal choice and there might be a better option.
Spear is your best aquatic weapon, hands down. You get reflect, evade, bleeding, immobilize and a decent counter-attack. The only problem is it puts you up-close to the enemy, which can mean certain death if the mob is too powerful. For sigils, I like superior sigil of accuracy and superior sigil of force. If I spent more time in the water, I might prefer bloodlust here, but since my time in the water is rare, I just went with what I detailed above.
Dagger/Harpoon gun- These are, perhaps, your weakest weapons, and I personally don't like them much. Dagger, like torch, has this wierd combination of ranged/local attacks, and while it can give poison, I don't really find it that useful. Harpoon gun is your only other choice for aquatic (unless you wanted to just wield two spears, heh) and it is useful for those times when fighting something underwater from a distance is more desirable.

Put that bear away!

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Rangers should not be in the business of tanking! If you are using your pet solely as a tank, then you are doing it wrong. Ranger's pets are the most diverse and capable minions in the game. They can provide everything from great damage, to crowd control, to condition damage. Research your pets and optimize them for the situation at hand. This means you will be swapping pets out often.

Personally, the following are my favorite pets in the game. Of course, don't consider this an end-all-be-all list of pets in the game. As I said, research it, experiment, and find the pets best suited to you and your play style.

Devourer - These guys are easily my personal favorite pets in the game. Devourers are, honestly, pretty tough, and you might easily mistake them for tanking pets. But don't, they have some stellar skills. They are ranged attackers, meaning they will hang back with you and attack from a distance. Whiptail and Carrion poison their foes, and Lashtail bleeds. You do have to take care, as they do have uncontrollable knockbacks. But otherwise they are very solid pets.
Birds - The birds are high precision killers. This means they will score criticals often. They have decent vitality, but relatively low toughness, which makes them fairly squishy. Use them as spike damage dealers, and you'll be making the most out of them. Many people like birds specifically for PvP.
Hounds- The hounds a very diverse in and of themselves. They tend to have high toughness and vitality, which, again, might make you think of them as tanks. But, again, don't do that, as each brings special talents to battle. For example, the Fern Hound is a great supplimental healing boost (it's not a giant heal, rather a decent AoE boost with regen).
Drakes- The drakes are a very popular ranger choice, and for good reason, they are some great damage dealers. You get different elemental attacks from each of the drakes. Now, while the drakes are decent choices, it's my opinion that they are overused. Often there are better choices for the situation at hand.
Spiders- Like the devourers, they attack at range. They also have some great enfeebling moves. That being said, I personally prefer the forest spider over the rest, as it has the best pet poison attack available.

Understand how you interact with others!

As a ranger, you have a lot of ways you can interact with the players around you, and it's absolutely vital you understand them and work towards the best possible boon for the situation at hand.

Know when to use knockbacks - Longbow rangers who constantly knockback give the rest of us a very bad name. Additionally, rangers who avoid knockbacks altogether are not living up to their potential. The truth is, knockbacks are sometimes very important, and you should know when and why to use them. Any time an enemy needs to be interrupted, and this includes champions, knockback is your friend. A great example is Tootsie in Dry Top, where rangers can make or break the fight. Additionally, knockback is great for moving enemies around and crowd control. For example, during the skrit thief event in Dry Top, knockback should be used to push the thiefs away from their holes. But if you're not needing that interrupt and crowd control isn't necessary, then for fuck's sake don't use knockback, unless the mob you're fighting is next to a wall or barrier that will prevent them from flying back.
Understand Healing Spring - Healing Spring is probably the greatest AoE healing move in the game. As such, it's a stellar move to use in many team-based situations. That being said, it lays down a water field, which can negate the effects of other fields. So, you need to pay special attention to what's going on, and, if you're doing something where a fire field is up (stacking on the worms in Triple Trouble to burn them down, stacking on Tequatl's leg to burn him down, etc), for the love of Bob, do not drop a water field!
Learn your combo skills! - This goes along with understanding Healing Spring above. Here is a table of your combo skills. Learn it, memorize it, and use it.
"Search and Rescue!" - While I wouldn't recommend running with it slotted all the time, this is a handy little skill that can be very useful. Any time you're fighting something nasty in large groups, having this skill ready when people get downed is awesome. Sending your pet to raise someone lets you continue to focus on the mob. Additionally, if you run and raise with your pet you can get that person back on their feet in considerably less time than someone by themselves.

It's a Trap!

Rangers have a spectacular range of traps and enfeebles available, and a pure trap-ranger build is godly in PvP and WvW. If you're so inclined, check it out, read up on it, and try your hand at being a trap-ranger!

Full caveat time now: Personally, I'm not a trap-ranger. I've tried the build before and found it to be entirely too micro-managy for my tastes. That being said, I know the trap-ranger is a solid build, and I have the utmost respect for people who can pull it off.

But because I'm not a trap-ranger, I won't go into any more detail about it, since I'm really not qualified to do so.

Conclusion

TL;DR, all I'm suggesting are the following things:

Don't Zerk yourself - Precision and Ferocity are more important than pure Power.
Use all your weapons - Don't limit yourself to one set of weapons, diversify!
Understand how you work with others - Use knockbacks and healing springs accordingly, and learn about combos.
(Optional) Pick up some trap skills - Again, I don't run a trap-ranger, but that doesn't mean it's not a stellar build.