So what's wrong with rangers now?

It is simple:

Rangers are probably the most hard to play class. Therefore, many fail to play them effectively. Therefore, this is one of the reasons they have a bad reputation.

Interesting point but I disagree. The purpose of pulling is to lure a foe or two away from the main mobs so they can be ambushed by the rest of the group the ranger is the only one who should be doing this because with his longbow he is not acually aggroing the mob.

When a warrior "pulls" the strategy is for everyone to stay out of the warriors aggro circle while he draws all aggro of the entire mob. Once the mob is totally upon him everyone else nukes and attacks full force.

While there is a time and place for both of these stategies. I wouldn't call what the warrior is doing as actually pulling rather than being a mere distraction. But unexperienced warriors cant tell the difference and think they are pulling in the true sense.

My favorite is when a ranger pulls with a short bow...

Puller's please use a longbow or a storm bow.

Guilty on occassion... however it's when I want to be the center of attention for the baddies. Otherwise, yes... range is good.

Why pull anymore....just send the warrior while everyone else stays out of agro. When they all attack, the ele can cast, the ranger can barrage, and the monk can balthazar's aura. Creatures dead in under 20sec!

The only time we ever pull now is when there are 3-4 groups that are on patrol in that particular area. If you pull make sure it is a small group because the ranger often runs back to the group and then everyone is is agro'ed. This is not always the ranger's fault, because often, the group does not back up far enough to give the ranger room to fall back.

Your second paragraph answers your question, but the senario you painted about the ranger being persued and baddies following him to the rear ranks is the classic example of a non-tanking wamo. Once the subect of the pull is lured away from main mob. His path should be blocked at some point by the wamo tank so the ambush can begin. If he is gonna stand there and let the baddies run past him and attack the casters then that is definately a tank issue.

Also very often the ranger is crowded as you mentioned because the wamo wont get back and the casters follow his lead making it even more crowded, but this is just poor play all the way around. Oftentimes resulting in the wamo blocking traps and mobs scattering thoughout the ranks because the casters are too close and the tank is noobish.

I cant count the number of times in the FoW where a patrol has been pulled maybe 2 shadow warriors a ele and mesmer and the wamo watches the shadow warriors run right past him and reek havic on our castors. He then snaps out of his daze and begins wailing away on the mesmer and ele which are nearly dead already. Only after the soft targets are dead does he help with the shadow warriors. After which we are scraping a castor or two up off the ground by that time.

Unfortunately there's just no way to really tell if your getting a good or bad Ranger in a random pug until you start fighting (unless its a guildy or a friend). Allow me to dream for a moment: wouldn't it be nice if A-net incorportated a skill bar on a character for everyone else to see. Just like when your in a mission zone you can see the persons skill level and character combination (lvl20 E/MO), you would also see a skill bar ranging from 0-100% that would calculate numerous factors based on the person average performance in combat. That could be changed for healers as well on there performance to heal a party and so on.

There is no way to tell if anyone is any good regardless of class. The probelm is rangers are assumed to suck and everyone else is assumed to be good automatically.

From my experience necros and mesmers are in the same boat as rangers as far as people assuming they suck (which they dont). No class sucks, only the people playing them.

That's funny...the only class I assume sucks is the warrior. Too many first time users jump for the warrior class because they assumre that it is the strongest class. This is true early on, but changes as other classes gain the key skills that define them. From my many PUG quests I now assume that ~7 out of 10 warriors suck.

What's funny are the warriors that leave the party as soon as they don't see x number of monks in the group. This is common in the new areas especially.

Then was the warrior last night (new necro for me, Defend the Wall mission) that would only "help us" if someone gave him a green dye. Demand payment from me for services like that = instaboot. Replaced him with a mesmer.

I got in a group last night for Thunderhead with my ranger. there were 7/8 in the party still looking for a monk, The leader was asking for suggestions. There were 4 warriors in the group, so I suggested dropping 1 warrior and getting an elementalist. Guess what, they kicked me! I wasn't really surprised, it has happened before. I put the idiot leader on my ignore list so I don't have to deal with him in the future.

Good, you will NEVER beat Thunderhead with 4 warriors! The key is having rangers trap the doors and good shot calling by the team. Nuking to get rid of enemy fast is important. If any get by, one real monk is good so they can keep the king alive.

I have found the best way to beat Thunderhead is with 2-3 real people and the rest NPC. One person on each pair of catapults is enough.

Anyone who says that rangers cannot pack on the most straigt up normal damage obviously hasnt thought about it too much.
1)Even the premade class "flame slinger" in the PvP section packs on something around 80 damage total per hit,
2)Hammer rangers pack on the damage like no other, thanks to tiger's fury and expertiese,
3)status/preperations add lots of damage (mmmm apply poison)
etc. Even though the point of rangers is that they are supposed to be the jack of trades, in many cases they can do somethings better than the classes that specialize in it.

And people who dont pick rangers are stupid.

It isn't that other classes aren't assumed to suck. I assume that everyone on my team is going to suck. It's that a sucky Elementalist is still going to cast Meteor Shower every time it refreshes, and a sucky Warrior is still going to stand there and take hits (assuming, of course, he isn't completely incomptent and just runs off to solo things and dies). A sucky Ranger is going to sit in the back and plink things and do effectively nothing. Look at Aidan. That guy doesn't do anything.

Warriors and Monks and Elementalists can be bad. But they can't be *as bad* as Rangers or Mesmers. When you assume everyone is terrible, you look at the floors, and Rangers and Mesmers have the lowest ones.

Peace,
-CxE

It was a JOKE!!!!

Took the words right out of my mouth.

btw defeated glint on secpnd try ( used hench on first)solely because I kept her from using crystal hybernation,was supposed to be really hard, but I thought it was rather easy.

I agree, started a mesmer a few days ago, and have done all missions up to Kryta without any warrior, and I have to say, the missions seemed easier than ever, never have some idiot aggroing everything in sight. Though I am in no way slamming warriors, I think it is just as hard to find a good one of those as anything else.

It's true that people jump to warriors first because they're insecure and think they can dominate. Me personally though, I'm a melee type, so I would have picked a melee char no matter what. Even now being very experienced, I still choose melee, though I do have a protector monk. People judge w/mo's too harshly, though i guess its hard not to unless you actually see the warrior in battle.

I'm always the very last character to die in a party too, the only reason I'll ever die is if im afk and someone aggro's a bunch of monsters, or my entire party is dead and the whole mob is on me, and even then, I last a long time until eventually i slowly die. Sometimes my whole party is dead and I'm left standing, facing a dozen foes, and then winning! I had a case in Kryta against a mob of skeletons. About 11 or 12 of them were on me, and my party was long dead, it took a couple of minutes but I cleared away all of them (thank you "I will avenge you!").

Rangers are also very amazing, though I tend to not even use bows. My r/w is very odd and most people badmouth my build (which I won't reveal because it'll shortly revolutionize pvp ) but then they see me and are just awe'd.

Don't judge a character until you see them in action.

Exactly. Good rangers are hard to come by.