The ranger is a great duelist, so if you play this in small or 1v1 skirmishes, they will normally win out, but i think the problem lies in the the fact that they are heavily dependent on their utility CDs to fight. I know there are a lot of people that complain about somethings that doesn't need buffing/much attention, but the aspect of a ranger having horridly long cds on their all around utilities, while the shorter ones are situational, and spirits are practically useless in SPvP.
You probably played some people whom don't know how to fight melee rangers/rangers in general, because they are not common in SPvP at all. My main is a ranger, and i can honestly say that they have horrendous movement when they are slowed with cripple/chill. For your build, you do not have empathic bonds, the 30pts in wilderness that pulls of conditions to your pet every 10 seconds, because you wanted to get damage. This will make your only condition removal your well, which is great if the fight sticks around in the same area. For people after facing you the first time, will realize that you run two melee weapons and they could just sit outside of your well and attack you, and the problem with running out side of your well is no condition removal for crippling effects. Even if you have a great sword with swoop,
cripple for some reason
makes the swoop ranged significantly shorter, meaning it will not go even half the distance, but will take the same amount of time to do the full action.
I think the main thing that is keeping the ranger back is their pet is practically most of their damage, and if someone is running around in a circle, your pet doesn't really even hit him at all, and the ranged pets are really slow at attacking. Maybe if the pet's attack connected more often to a moving target(because the better PvPers aren't going to just stand there especially vs a melee ranger), and/or give us the ability to use the other abilities that the pets have on demand, rather than them randomly activating it.
An example would be you using the stun/daze of a greatsword, followed up by the dog's take down or something. This would probably make the game play more fun, than your dog just randomly casting take down when the guy is evading, or your moa casting the heal spell as you drop your healing well, essentially wasting the cooldown.
I don't think rangers need too much of a buff, as it will be too big of a jump, but there are somethings at the moment that they could tweek just a little that could be a game changer, like the last thing I mentioned.
Also, the ranger, especially with your setup doesn't have any real burst. The swoop is the biggest hitting attack for your weapon set up, and your pet practically does half your damage if it hits, and the only time we do burst is when we swap pets and gain quickness. Also Rampage as One is one of the strongest elites in the game, and it lasts 20 secs
.
As for match ups in 1v1s: (note that the ranger sucks in most things past solo or duo, even though the SB is good when the enemy doesn't pay attention to you)
Warrior - If you have a shortbow, this fight is pretty easy for vs most warriors. As a melee, vs a GS warrior, you have a good chance of winning as long as you are smart enough to dodge the bull charge -> frenzy -> HB, or at least use Signet of Stone on it if he is already pointblank. The mace/shield and hammer will beat the melee ranger, but he cannot catch you.
Mesmer - Shortbow sucks going into chaos armor, since it does small damage but shoots fast, granting the mesmer a bunch of buffs, and you not so much. Confusion kills you. It's a pretty easy fight if you use a longbow and something like a GS or S/WH, where you just zerg them down with rampage, since they tend to be pretty squishy. Just Signet of Stone their mind wrack(when you see the close start running at you).
Guardians - You don't have a chance to kill him, but he can't kill you either unless you just sit there and kill yourself from retaliation. (This means you cannot contest points in SPvP)
Thief - This is more of a coin toss, if they get the opening on you, they have a high chance to kill you. They won't kill you when you have Signet of Stone up, but you will die when he comes back with steal up and you don't have SoS. On the otherhand, if you chose to fight him first, you are superior at range and as long as you don't mindlessly rush your pet at him, and he just shadow steps to you, you should be able to kill him if he is glass cannon and doesn't run. When he runs and stealth, you have to guess where he ran to or is stealthing to, Assuming that he doesn't have more than enough initiative to jump away more than one.
Elementalist - For bunkers, you really can't kill because they just spam snare if you are running a melee ranger, and for range they could just dodge behind pillars. As for scepter they will lose(as if scepter doesn't get wrecked by everything) and the same with D/D. For D/D, your Rampage as One will stop their CC and your bow can still shoot them if they choose to run away with RtL, as long as you have some sort of stability for when they try and cast their updraft.
Engineers - I don't have much of a comment here, as I haven't faced any really good engineers to comment, and I don't PvP with them either(and the mesmer), but it seems that a ranger cannot beat a good engineer, and it seems that way when I watch some of the good engineers stream, but as for the other engineers, I just steam roll them.
Necromancers - This match is also a toss up, but only vs a conditionmancer, since we can stomp a purepower build with out temporary damage immunity. It is more of a control the point. If the necro can live past the duration of your well, then you practically lose if you don't have the necromancer down past a certain health. Melee rangers cannot beat a good conditionmancer at all, so your only hope as a ranger in this match up is a bow.
Rangers - The ranger is OP in this match up, since they have a 100% win ration, this needs serious balancing.
In WvWvW, rangers cannot do much to help contribute to sieges once they take out the units standing in the front of the wall, they lack spamable AoE, and traps doesn't reach far enough with the trait. In terms of shooting down at people, they make it rain on a single person, but once they duck behind LoS, that is the end of it. Your pet is usesless, since it will blow up vs any decent size group, and the ranged ones have a hard time shooting down because of pet AI.
TLDR;
The rangers are good duelist, but that isn't what PvP is about at the moment, and they are suffering because of it. In WvWvW, they have a hard time hitting anything past the enemies standing on the edge of the walls, and volley is the only AoE that hits up there, and even then it is a long cd. In SPvP, they need their utilities to do well, but even then, they are terribly long. Anet should buff them, but not to much, because I believe that they only need minor tweeks here and there to be able to compete.
1
, but most others you could stomp fairly easily especially if they don't know their class well enough.
