Will Rangers ever be fixed? This is a serious question, that i have to ask, originally when plane of power expansion was released Rangers finally had a voice to use, started to really come around as a dps class instead of a failed tank class that couldn't wear plate armor, headshot and archery skills were added to the class after our abysmal usefulness in classic until Luclin, I understand that some thought that rangers headshot skill procced way too often, well it has been placed with 1 Headshot rank until the seeds of destruction Expansion which this ranger believes is total , why even have it at this point if it is a useless skill, as it is your lucky if you have a headshot proc once every hour, even with maxed Dex, Rangers deserve to have some of their power back that was taken away most likely by someone who was sad that monks or wizards were no longer the top dps in raid parses. Rangers used to have the ability to solo when they couldn't find a group, well many rangers i have seen and known still experience very long lfg queues because simply we aren't as useful as other classes. In every fantasy medium Rangers are known to be useful with the bow as well as the melee, what EQ has done to rangers in this game have simply turned this hybrid class back into something rarely wanted in groups and taken away our ability to solo by nerfing our headshot capability and lowered our archery dps, please for the love of god give us the option to be able to solo again. i mean why is headshot AA in the game when we have to wait more than 10 expansions until we can get a 2nd rank of headshot? Currently headshot is 1 rank from Planes of Power to Seeds of Destruction, and rarely ever procs so why is it even in the game? Either fix it or remove it and credit people the AAs spent to get it in the first place, its past time to or get off the pot.
I have played my ranger since 2002. I used to play 3/4hrs a day but mostly solo as my buddies were in the US. last couple of years I have just done Overseer instead of playing, mainly because its hard to molo/solo in the last two expansions. its a shame that Rangers have been cut out and although in groups they have a use, others classes are better. Some Rangers casual or not need the game to provide some spirited fun!!
It sounds like you play on TLP. The Rangers that had a high Dex score when headshot was redesigned loved the change, but many did voice their concerns about lower levels and what happens to them with the change. I don't know what the ultimate fix would be before simply getting into Broken Mirror or better gear with type 5 slots, but TLP is an important part of game development attention and this has long gone unaddressed - too long. This continues to be an important facet for the class on Live, it should be equally effective and usable on TLP - or in others words it should work as frequently as it did when all us old timers played in the content when it was new.
when it worked that frequently for old timers, it only worked on the lightest of light blue /con enemies. Now, it works on all ('shottable) enemies up to level-1. It is not the same.
Rangers are not broken. Soloing is only intended for SK's and pet classes. The era of ranger archery was an anomaly due to raid bows being tradeable and group weapons being garbage.
Been playing a ranger for over 20 years. They don't seem broke to me. I don't play on a TLP though. I played those expansions when they were current. I molo/solo in the last three live expansions all the time.
i do play on TLP servers and it used to be good but the fact is from the planes of power expansion there is 1 rank of head shot until the seeds of destruction expansion, to me that's a waste of a skill and a waste of AAs that could be used to spend on other things, and simply rangers historically have always been able to solo minimally, and they ability was taken away with the nerf to headshot, now its pointless to even get headshot its a waste of those 5 AAs early in the game. there are a lot of changes that have happened to live servers that still affect players on TLP, there really should be different sets of rules if it is going to be run this way, and you can say only pet classes can solo but at this early portion of the game i have seen wizards solo pretty easily in plane of fire, so cloth can solo over chain? really all rangers have become with the live changes on a TLP is a sometimes useful dps, hell, rangers aren't even the only unbalanced class at this point of the game, there really needs to be 2 different rule sets from live to TLP is what this boils down too maybe the changes are great for live rangers , i personally wouldn't know. What i do know is that TLP rangers have kept getting the shaft from day 1 when we were nothing more than a groups fodder if we could even find a group.
This thread : The only way a Ranger can solo is Headshot! Me : No, it isn’t. Bow kite. Root and shoot. Mob does not have to be Headshot’able, soloing Vxed back in the day was not Headshotting. Headshot speeds it up, but the only requirement for a Ranger to be able to solo something is it be rootable, snarable with enough room to kite, or (ideally) both. Headshot is a gimmick. It should not have been as useful as it was, nor as useful as it was made to be when they adjusted the damage and firing rate back during Veil of Alaris. Learn to accept 10-20 minute bow kills if you want to solo. That’s not broken, its just slower than you want to accept.
I had never thought if i want to solo i gotta fight headshot mobs i just kill dark blue light blue mobs and once you hit the xp wall at 111 i went to aa xp.
yup great dps so good i made a few more rangers for those rare's that have a ton of hps. Pureshot called shot autofire and watch the mob die. Love my ranger they can do alot of stuff.
I box a ranger at 120 and I exp with headshotable mobs(why would you choose anything but?). That guy does crazy dps, with one/two easy macros. Headshot procs several times on each mob, not sure what your issue is with that, but my Hdex is 3000 on him. If you want to win DPS battles, choose a zerker or rogue, necro, mage etc., but for an easy as pie toon to box, rangers are tops, don't even have to position them. If you want to be a solo god, choose necro. There are pretty much no mobs, that my necro can't solo/molo. I solo with my ranger easily in places like Maidens eye, rips through mobs there.
Q: Why did the Ranger cross the road? A: The chicken got him down to half a bubble! This was probably the #1 EQ joke in 1999.
Ranger is a swordsman and a mage too, not just an archer. Learn to synergize your class abilities in group situations, you should never focus on one fighting style because that's not how rangers are built. Now, Molo/Solo...Well yeah, we have some problems with that at times. But we're a group class first and foremost, for better or worse.
for a point of reference i did a 3 simple combat dummy parses. no casting or anything, and i used a 2hder for melee. auto attack only - 140k dps auto attack w/ empowered blades - 180k dps autofire only - 215k dps The only time we should be using our swords is when we are forced, or choose to tank. Outside of those 2 situations your just doing less dps. i dont know what you mean about the mage thing, we are listed as druid/warrior hybrids, yes we nuke but its the druids line of spells we use. sadly since EoK when we got archery mastery 4 we became solidified as archers, since then the devs have done nothing to improve our melee dps to even come close to archery.
Yeah - I apologize for "mage" comment being confusing, I have a carry-over habit of just using mage as a generic term for spellcasters lol. It is a druid spell line and the damage is decent enough if nothing else. And it is probably more noticeable at cap but I do tend towards archery myself admittedly. It's easier to learn how to play the archery niche because Autofire Only really is all you need in many cases (And the poison arrow AA is pretty handy) plus any related discs if you're burning. Also a much, much lower chance of death. lol.
Just for clarity, this isn't technically true outside of having 0 ADPS as far as the full claim goes. This is inherently true however, for our burns since The Broken Mirror. Sustained DPS in regard to weapon choice has changed a few times in the last few years alone. Just to preface the listing, there have been a handful of fixes to bow calculations over the past few years. So looking to the past doesn't necessarily mean it is correct now but just as far as history goes it was the following (provided you had relatively consistent adps from at least a bard). EoK - Duel Wield (Weapon Proc decreases happened after the fact, could be different) Ring of Scale - Duel Wield The Burning Lands - Duel Wield (Archery very close, 2hander also close-ish after some AA changes later) Torment of Velious - 2HB (Addition of Sympathetic Procs helping it take the cake) Claws of Veeshan - 2HP (Archery extremely close) Terror of Luclin - Archery Night of Shadows - Archery This is from a raiding ranger point of view; I could see group geared rangers having possibly different results though. Just to reiterate, this is also found through the consistency of ADPS in what I'd call a "typical" melee group. There are certainly different group makeups that can make 1 pull over the other or disc combos in general. For the most part, just doing Archery always is a safer bet than 1 of the melee skills. It's just not an optimal path to take every expansion as far as DPS goes. As an aside, if you're not under Pureshot or doing Headshottable mobs then you should use DW with Imbued Ferocity to optimize your DPS potential. This holds true both currently and backdating all of those expansions.
Thinking about making a comeback with my ranger over the Labor Day weekend…hopefully class is not as broken as used to be…
