Decap , headshot and assasinate

Excellent point.

The bigger issue is that people who have these abilities use them irresponsibly to clear out entire zones, making said zones unavailable to people of that level range. It only takes 1-2 swarmers to clear out a zone, and given the amount of swarmers, enough zones are kept clear on prime time that people of that level aren't able to exp.

This is the disruptive side of swarming. It's also why, I think, swarming was targeted.

I personally don't have an issue with people HSing in instances, but I see why devs have an issue with people HSing LBs in static zones.

I know Headshot gets a lot of notice because people seem to refuse to do it anywhere but static zones, but most SK swarming tends to take place only in instances.

So not everyone who has these abilities use them irresponsibly. A number of them do on every server and they give everyone else a bad name. And the industry standard in gaming and EQ specifically has always been punish the many for the sins of the few.

Not even going to bother with the rest of the post. Headshot always worked on exp mobs. When you first got it, you could kill mobs level 48 or lower. (Much more recently, that was changed to 46, but we got 3 more ranks to "compensate", which only benefitted those who were max level at the time, and hurt those who were lower).

The earliest you could get it was, if memory serves, 62. Making a new toon now, it looks like the minimum level to get it now is 60, so maybe they changed that when they reduced the level of mob it worked on by 2.

Level 48 mobs were capable of getting a level 62 ranger exp. They were not Grey con.

Level 48 mobs, however, WERE grey to a 65. Perhaps that is where your confusion stems from? Did you rush to 65 before getting the first rank of Headshot? Personally, I had, and I had thought of it as being useless, which is why I didn't bother to even get Rank 2 of Headshot until I was 85.

Regardless, it was an exp tool for those still levelling, when it first came along (of course, when it first came along, AA's were painfully slow, as well). It did not help when you were max level in PoP.

Rogues had assassinate at lvl 60 in kunark which worked for quite a few expansions for exp too. Many other mechanics have changed since that time and it wasn't as effective of a solo tool. Many of those changes were supposed to be put in to help in that department.

You are wrong. Period.

No; there were posts on The Ranger's Glade about exp'ing in one of the Kunark dungeons with it; either Nurga or Droga, back when PoP was the current expansion.

Back then, of course, up until TBS gave us Vinelash Cascade, it was all about pulling single mobs to Headshot. When people asked how often it fired, the joke was "once per mob". That was apparently what had made that dungeon ideal - easy to control pulls, to root and Headshot.

Initially, it could be used to gain exp. It is plain and simple as that.

At level 62 I purchased the ONE head shot AA that existed, and went to Acrylia Caverns. Back then there was no such things a gray cons, the mobs that didn't give experience were green cons. I spent a month in AC headshotting the LOW light blue cons (what would now, under the current con system, be green cons) at the entrance.

When I crawled out of there I had four things:
1. 100 AA's.
2. Level 63.
3. A desire to never see another grimling, again.
4. A pathological hatred of headshotting for XP.

Over the years my hatred for headshotting lessened and eventually I could headshot again, but I found it an extremely boring way to pass the time.

I have much sympathy for the fact that berserkers just recently got their decapitation working. You have noticed however, that they are making up for lost time by doing things such as soloing all of Time. I'm jealous, yeah. Am I calling for nerfs, never. I have a zerker I could be working on instead playing my ranger. (Miss my wizard though.) These jealous posters should be leveling a zerker instead of trying to take away someone else's fun.

Soloing all of time? a lot of classes could do that at level 85.. some even at 80 i suspect.

I have a lvl 96 ranger as my main, and as a casual player i have used hs quite a bit.

I havent seen anyone on AB complain about HS recently, as most bleedin edge players are in differnt content now. Theres better exp to be had in ROF for those in raid guilds who can grp with friends.
HS is used for catchup by players under 96 and with under 4k aa.

On my server people have accepted that pyramids will be camped by a ranger. They arent whining on about it, because they dont have inferiority complexes, like some in this thread appear to have.

Ive grped a few times with beserker and rogues, both of which kill faster than ranger imo.

Sometimes i go to sod content to grp with lower lvl guildies or friends, only folk in there are sk and rangers eg kaesora library. exp is ave but its relatively safe if you know the zone layout.

in my guild mages and necros are dominating rof content, they can solo t2 named. Am i complaining? NO...good for them.

Can i get rof pickup grps as a ranger...no. Unless i know the players as friends or ex guildies.
The reality is rangers arent needed in cutting edge content. They are second class citizens for most content, and soe dont know how to carve out a niche for them......which is why hs exists.

imo rangers.beserk/rogues should get killshot upgrades @ rate of 2 expansions behind. I think thats balanced.

nerf every class for this outrage!

HS is overpowered and should be removed from the game/made obsolete. I main a Monk and we have to work to earn our xp so out of curiosity I rolled a rogue and leveled him up and went assassinating in Feerrot (when it wasnt monopolised by Rangers). Assassinate is nowhere near the Ability HS is, Rogues have to get toe to toe with a mob (there are times when Ive melee'd a light blue from 100 to zero health without an assassinate) to have a chance for assassinate to go off (the risk to rangers to do the same thing is negligible and more often than not its a one shot kill for them) . Ive been in the same zone with them meleeing a Lizard and frequently had a ranger come by and one shot kill the mob im fighting with HS. This ability for a HYBRID is WAY OVERPOWERED.

I have maxxed anatomy and all the Assassinate abilities on my roguebot and the frequency of it going off is far less than what rangers get out of HS.

It's okay for Rogues, but not Ranger?

Might want to narrow that down to something more precise than "Hybrid" Maybe just someone who can AE snare/root while producing their peak damage output at a comfortable distance away from direct melee combat. Which is a very thinly veiled generalization. Sorry. /shrug. Rogues and berserkers have to deal with being stunned, beat on, out ran, being more precise with pulls etc. It is not as efficient and there will be a need to have a real healer or tank there to get the most out of it. At that point, you might as well as a rogue or berserker go do a real group in real content where you can use your dps abilities to their greatest advantage killing dark blue or higher cons instead of messing around with light blues and greenies.

Rogues are PURE MELEE thats their specialisation. The devs were quick to do away with Bard swarm kiting (another hybrid overpowered ability) but differed in Risk Vs Reward compared to the Low Risk HS/VL ability for massive returns. Needs to be removed from the game.

Cry much?

Nice smokescreen. "We need overpowered abilities so we can get 3000 extra AA". Those AA are actually useful to you. And how about comparing with classes that have similar AA counts but donot have an insta-XP ability?

You know, warriors/monks would probably love to have an extra 3000 AA to work for. I think with the current state of the warrior class, that's infact exactly what they are missing: 3000 AA that actually give them more power or make them more useful.

Since almost all classes get the same 'useless' AA's (innate XX, half of the stat overcap AA's, tradeskills), I can even make an argument that those 3000 "missing" AA's would have be worthwhile to get.

So, which one is it?

1) Some classes need more AA to stay balanced, thus: All classes are balanced without AA and with maxed AA.

2) Some classes get more AA and gradually move ahead of the curve: Classes are balanced without AA, but after maxing AA, some classes are ahead of the curve.

3) Some classes get more AA and gradually become balanced: Classes are not balanced to begin with, but after maxing AA, all are balanced.

I'm pretty sure that for classes that get a lot of AA, the situation is 2. All of those little improvements enhance each other in unforeseen ways. It is little wonder that hybrids went from classes that needed a lot of help to some of the most overpowered classes in the current game.

Magicians do not get an instant kill against summoned/construct. The spell description on our summoned/construct nuke line is misleading. It only has a chance to proc an even bigger DD, nothing more. In case you are referring to the spell Banishment, there is no experience or loot given for that mob that was basically removed as it had never existed and it is capped at mobs level 60 or lower.