We’ve put together this Guild Wars 2 Ranger profession guide to familiarize you with
the class that never travels alone in ArenaNet’s massively multiplayer role playing
game. This handy guide gives you all the most important info about the Ranger from
Guild Wars 2 at a glance.
You Should Play A Ranger If: If you hate playing alone, or love having a pet in MMOs,
the Ranger could be for you. The Ranger’s greatest asset is his pet, one of over
four dozen types of creatures found in the wild and charmed to fight at the player’s
side. In addition, the Ranger utilizes a great number of long distance attacks via
the shortbow and longbow, and has a great number of traps and debilitating conditions
to hinder the enemy.
Read on for the rest of our in-depth Guild Wars 2 Ranger guide.
How You Play A Ranger: The ranger can have up to four “slotted†pets at any given
time: two land pets and two aquatic pets. You can hotswap your pet out (available
from Level 1) at any time with F4, providing a quick heal to the initial pet.
Pets can be charmed and “collected†by finding a wild animal at large with the
“juvenile†tag out in front. Pets are arranged into families (for instance,
canines), which all share three attacks. Each individual species has a unique skill,
however, activated by pressing F2. F1 will command the pet to attack the current
target, and F3 will switch being passive and aggressive mode. While that may sound a
bit complicated, for the most part, you won’t need to micromanage your pet…they’ll
help unless you specifically tell them not to.
Rangers can deal a fair amount of damage, but can also act well in a support role.
Rangers can set numerous traps to debilitate the opponent, as well as call Spirits to
buff their allies and create beneficial AoE effects on the battlefield.
Rangers do incorporate elements of previous MMO’s ranged classes. With this
familiarity, and a relative lack of the stranger mechanics found in the Elementalist
or Engineer classes, the Ranger is one of the easier professions to pick up for
anyone a bit uncomfortable with the complexity of the game. Give it a shot!
