What do you Rangers find yourself doing a lot of in groups these days? Or what are you bringing to the table in a group? Non Rangers, what do you want from a ranger when you invite them to a group? Give your top 2, here's mine I'm a 95 ranger. 1 - Crowd control. This seems weird, but I think my biggest benefit to a group recently is vinelashing, blustering and bluster-tagging adds on pulls. Seems like there is a lack of CC classes in groups and Rangers fill that gap fairly well. 2 - Mediocre DPS & Buffs. Basically any "DPS" class played by a real person kills me in a parse but people seem content to invite me under the label of DPS. Also, people seem to love the Cloak of ____ line of buffs , always get asked for that. Oddly, no one says much about predator, which I love. I pop guardian of the forest and auspice every time they are up for the group, but I don't think a group member has ever noticed, sad face. Curious to hear your responses.
Predator has been stagnated to near uselessness due to ever increasing atk power. Most classes don't need the double attack mod to double attack every round. Don't even get me started on the str line. I can't really comment on the grouping thing. I'm a raider so I can do most content with my cleric bot and 2 dps mercs. When I do group with a knight or with some dps, the challenge is how many mobs can we kill at once.
If you do things correctly, not much will out damage you on a named with your bow disc. Make a hotkey the ties your disc to all your enhancing abilities in 1 click: Disc, guardian of the forest, outrider's attack, 3rd spire (if you have a Zerker around a lot use 2nd spire) and your swarm pet. Keep an eye on Guardian of the Forest and hit Group Guardian as soon as it fades if the fight lasts longer than a min and a half. Cast both Arrow spells then hit Force Rejuv to cast them again for max dps. Have a second key that ties Volitile Arrow, Ice Arrow and Scouts Mastery of Fire or Ice - I tend to use Fire. Click this after using Force Rejuv and start nuking. Click a bow proc before you engage, I tend to use Frost Arrows as Poison Arrows is just too much agro. Watch your Agro meter and be ready to drop all your agro with Cover Tracks if needed. Side note: Tie you're first few spell gems to 1 key. I Do the best Wasp DoT in slot 1, Calls Shots 2, Focused Arrows 3, Fire Nuke 4 (at 100 you have a special one that enhances the next Fire nuke), Fire Nuke 5, Ice Nuke 6, Splashback nuke 7. Learn to spam this button. Even with a group bow, you will out damage most people.
DPS Auspice/GGOTF < Huge DPS increasers for your group Vinelash/Flusterbolt/Ghetto CC capability Ghetto Pulling ability < see Prior point Occasional offtanking Healing ability/Curing ability helps quite abit on odd group missions like Chapterhouse2 We have a Ranger in our Fellowship, Typically during grinding sessions hes #2 on the DPS parse, or running neck and neck with the monk depending on how attentive either of them is. Pretty easily outdpsing if not doubling the wizard mercs DPS (sustained) and on a burn can bring some prettyy decent numbers. I don't know about Jhenna's advice if thats legit or not, but I don't often see the ranger I group with only Bow mobs down (might have to do with the fact we have a Bard/Bst for HH effect).
Jhenna, I have ignored the volatile arrow, ice arrow lines as I heard they were not very impressive. I will buy them based on your recommendation and see how they do. I just set up my multi-binds and it makes a world of difference. Not sure if it boosts DPS much, but it makes gameplay much easier. I hear a lot of folks spamming summers to increase DPS, not sure I see this in my parses. I assume people are weaving this in between melee rounds, which I am pretty horrible at for the moment . Also I don't have the lvl 94 spell yet, so maybe that is the difference! I think the ADPS from auspice and GGoTF is underrated by folks in most groups.
Summer's receives a huge boost at 99. At 99 it does the damage of both of the 30 sec reuse nukes put together. At 94, it only does the damage of one of them. There is no threading spells though. Summer's is our only dd we can cast endlessly. It does help increase dps, just not as much as it does once you reach 99. As far as Jhenna's advice goes, I wouldn't use second spire ever. Go with first spire (if you're grouped with a zerker) and you will be able to cast summer's more often resulting in more dps than second spire. Poison arrows is our best arrow proc line, but it only comes in at 1kish dps. I never even bother with it. First spire would increase poison arrow dd procs though. You can also combine scout's mastery, IF, and first spire for increased damage as well. There's quite a few uses for first spire.
Ranger CC ability is top notch as far as roots/snares go. AOE, single target, knock back, they've got it all. A good ranger is capable of being main puller in any zone that roots work splitting with fluster/bluster. It's not as easy as a bard or monk has it, but it's good. Rangers will do more DPS with melee 95% of the time - but when their bow disc is up and assuming roughly equivalent weapons/bow, auto fire beats melee. A 100 ranger with proper DPS AAs, group gear, and sham epic click will regularly be capable of burning ~60-100k DPS on group named depending on fight duration and crits. Their DPS isn't #1, but it's far better than a DPS merc and not far behind wizard/monks in a group setting.
Non-ranger view: - CC and/or pulls. - Allround mix of dps and support. Whatever happens, the ranger has *something* that can help, whether it's dps, offtanking, or even when the brown stuff hits the big whirling blades of doom, healing. Mostly it'll be DPS though and hope none of the other tools are necessary.
We can CC and take some hits, our support is pretty awful otherwise unless you really want us to heal... We can but it's inefficient and priests blow us away, as they should. Our ADPS additions to a group are minimal, in that most others seem to have a lot of it in similar forms which makes it redundant. However as of 100 and the change with CoF to Bosquestalker's Disc you don't need 3 groups of people to support your dps... Use this and love it.
quiote from some: Side note: Tie you're first few spell gems to 1 key. I Do the best Wasp DoT in slot 1, Calls Shots 2, Focused Arrows 3, Fire Nuke 4 (at 100 you have a special one that enhances the next Fire nuke), Fire Nuke 5, Ice Nuke 6, Splashback nuke 7. Learn to spam this button. name of the precise nukes/ dots are those ?
In groups I provide stellar DPS, a tank when needed, off-tanking if there is another tank, pulling from 1 mob to 100 (if I'm lazy), and CCing (usually the mob the wizard merc hits 2 sec after punting)....sometimes all of them at once. The one thing I don't do is sit back and bow like nooblet.
Ranger buffs have fallen to the dead side, there have been several of us parse them in the last few expansions and there at the best maybe 40 - 45 dps at there worse 25 to 30.
Burn dps. Group Adps. High sustained DPS if you play properly. Always having Wolf/Oacc/Gwolf etc. If you're only getting 40-50dps from any of these you should probably put a weapon on.
Another thing to mention is the hit damage bonus on outrider's attack and second spire do not stack, so using them together is pointless and a waste of your spire. If you don't believe me parse max hit with them together then with just OAtt and it'll show you real quick.
Depends on what Reidyl is talking about Group Game...doing something of interest or just 'grinding' with a group? If Reidyl is talking about GROUP progression content and what does a Ranger bring to the table. You're taking a burn setup on a "hopefully" Named mob. So what are you doing to do while your burns (small and large) are in cool down? What do Rangers *bring* to the group table..... Ok...first things first. "and your swarm pet". LOL! Ok, I got it out of my system...all better now. swarm pet...now that's rich! Using my pets is not what I would consider dps. I would not tie a bunch of spells to a hotkey during group content. Unless you are doing absolutely nothing but sitting there dps'ing. (i.e. not pulling, not cc, not tanking or off tanking etc) I do not use any spire on a big burn for the sole reason of sustained dps. That is why we have multitudes of dps enhancements to continue to give good dps long after our two minutes of fame has ended. Cover Tracks is a 5 min refresh..(longest fade refresh in-game) Rangers are not the best in anything, but we do a lot of everything well, and that is what we bring. Skilled Rangers can pull almost as good, dps almost as good, cc almost as good...and we can kinda heal/cure too..sorta.
A ranger, solo, with their bow disc, will be out damaged by almost everyone. You require 2 other rangers, a shaman, bard, zerker, beastlord, enchanter, etc, etc, in order to do well with it. Use Bosquestalker's Disc.
