Something I found a bit back for down and dirty burn orders and such. http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ATZoa ... bWd4&hl=en I want to post this here so that any new or old rangers may benefit from a breakdown of our dps disc and aa usage. I also want to mention that this post is strictly my own opinion. However, there's no need for any sort of flames here, since the intended goal is discussion and helpful tips. General Overview: For those of you that have never played a ranger, particularly on a raid, it is often inferred that rangers are just a class needed for our attack buffs, a filler class when a pure dps class cant be found, or, to put it in more latent terms, a "walking corpse". Now, these things may be true for your average and below-average ranger, but a well played and knowledgeable ranger can put people to shame for thinking these things. It just takes some thinking, commonsense, and just knowing what your stuff does. Important Things to Note: DPS for all melee classes is highly dependent on timing. Many things stack, many things don't stack, and many things partially stack (especially for rangers). There is a perfectly ideal combination for burst DPS, and there is a different ideal combination for long duration fights. Obviously, stacking things that only partially stack will not be very effective in medium to long duration fights. Likewise, not stacking things and running out of time to use them can hurt your dps on the short burst fights. Spells Overview: Now I want to take a moment to go through and explain what I consider to be the 3 most important spells we have and what i consider to be a good spell line-up. Hail of Arrows/Arc of Arrows/Barrage of Arrows- Hail of Arrows contributes to a very large portion of our dps especially when combined with our archery disc and aas. It is also a very good spell for sustained dps in long fights. However, it has its limitations by being a directional AOE, and you do NOT want to use it in the follows scenarios: -An event that has a lot of summoning adds. Malarian Queen is a good example of this. -A mob that is NOT stationary. This includes mobs that are in fake corners. An example of this is Rottrude and most of the mobs in Tower. -Places that have multiple floors above/below each other. MMM is a great example of this ! (These spells go through walls and through floors which can easily cause trains.) I do realize that this covers just about every raid event ever created, because what event doesn't have adds any more? But this is what we have to work with, and being a detriment to the raid isn't worth some dps. Summer's dew/viridity/mist - This line of spell works VERY well with our first spire. Additionally, this line is a very good line to use when you want to get rid of your mana, because this line is the only nuke line we have that doesn't have a 20 second refresh, so it can be spammed over and over very quickly. However, it does generate more aggro than our other nukes, so keep that in mind when using it. Jolting Blades - This is a self buff that procs a jolt, but it does not stack with our DD proc buffs. This spell is usually underrated. If you get as nuke happy as I do, you should consider using this spell to help counter the aggro you get from your nuke spamming. A good spell line-up - Personally I use the following spell line up, so yours may vary: 1. Galvanic Ash (fire nuke) 2. Cataclysm Ash (fire nuke) 3. Barrage of Arrows 4. Summer's Viridity (fire/ice nuke) 5. Beetle Swarm (dot) 6. Horde of Hornets (dot) 7. Potameid Salve / Jolting Blades / Vinelash 8. Oceangreen Aquifer 9. Buff / ice nuke 10. Buff / ice nuke If you didn't notice, I don't like ice nukes. They aren't very efficient on mana, plus I don't have an ice focus while I'm writing this which makes it worse. But feel free to use them if you want. What you may or may not have available: Please click on the links and get familiar with what abilities do what, because I will not be going over them individually at this time (However, I will at some point). So, I'm going to assume you know what all of these things do throughout the rest of this guide. Also take note that most of our abilities overlap each other. AAs: Guardiant of the Forest Auspice of the Hunter Outrider's Accuracy First Spire of the Pathfinder Second Spire of the Pathfinder Outrider's Attack Pack Hunt Falcon Strike (epic 2.0 click) Group Guardian of the Forest Discs: Warder's Wrath Trueshot / Aimshot / Sureshot First Spire will ALWAYS be more dps than Second Spire, as long as you have the mana to spam nukes. Second Spire should be used when you have no mana, or don't have a large amount to spam nukes. In those cases then just hit it when ever you want. Its raw +damage at the end of your attacks, so it doesn't get affected by damage mods. But things like haste or slows DO affect it. So don't hit, if, for example; you have res effects on, or don't have haste. Third Spire should never be used for dps. Dps gains from it are very small, and it does not stack with the berserker Cry Havoc disc. However, right now it is bugged and is absorbing an unlimited amount of spell damage. So its useful to use on Brekt to absorb the DT or something, but that is about as far as its usefulness goes.
Different DPS Scenerios: This is the part of the post most of you were probably waiting for. This is where I will go over the different DPS scenarios. But Firstly, I'd like to point out that knowing the fight you're about to engage is the most important aspect. The length of the fight and the mechanics of the fight play a huge part in how you're going to maximize your dps, specifically in the use of Hail of Arrows and later versions of it. Additionally, I want to throw out there that rangers do NOT shine in short duration fights, but we do shine in mid-long duration fights because our sustained dps is a lot higher than other classes. Scenario 1 - Short Burn lasting 90 seconds or less In this Scenario, the goal is to do as much burst dps as possible. Breakdown of Option 1 00:00 - Fight begins, Guardian of the forest, Falcon Strike, Outrider's Attack, Sureshot disc, First Spire, Pack Hunt, Auspice of the Hunter 01:30 - Fight is over What you will want to do here is start off casting a BoA and keep casting BoA as it pops while throwing in 4 nukes between each cast. There is a lot of overlap in our abilities here, but the above combination and weaving of spells is our ideal combination for burst damage. Breakdown of Option 2 00:00 - Fight begins, Guardian of the forest, Falcon Strike, Outrider's Attack, Warder's Wrath, First Spire, Pack Hunt, Auspice of the Hunter 01:30 - Fight is over In this option you're using warder's wrath instead of sureshot. Only use this combination when you're doing a burn mob that isn't in a real corner, or if the mob has adds you don't want to hit with BoA. There is even more overlap in our abilities here from Warder's Wrath, but there is a small gain from using it, and a little more dps is better than nothing on a fight this short. As far as spell casting goes, you will be spamming nukes. Scenario 2 - Medium Duration Burn lasting around 3 minutes This is a fight that lasts in the neighborhood of 1.5-3 minutes. In this Scenerio there are 2 different options you can choose from to optimize your dps depending on the fight and what you're comfortable with. --Breakdown of Option 1 00:00 - Fight begins, Guardian of the forest, Falcon Strike, Outrider's Attack, Sureshot disc, First Spire, Pack Hunt 01:30 - CLICK OFF Sureshot Disc, Auspice of the Hunter, Outrider's Accuracy In this option, it is a given that, because you hit sureshot, you're going to be spamming Barrage of Arrows like crazy because its a lot of dps while throwing in 4 nukes between each BoA cast. I also bet many of the people who read this will ask 'why click off the disc?', and that is because after the first minute and a half Guardian of the Forest, Outrider's attack, and (assuming you have a shaman) shaman epic click will be over, and these abilities are what make our Barrage of Arrows do so much damage. Additionally, The disc does not stack with Outrider's Accuracy, and Outrider's Accuracy with Auspice will pump out more damage at that point than just your disc alone. --Breakdown of Option 2 00:00 - Fight begins, Guardian of the forest, Falcon Strike, Outrider's Attack, First Spire, Auspice, Pack Hunt 01:30 - Outrider's Accuracy, Warder's Wrath In this option you will not be casting BoA at all. In fact, you will be spamming nukes! Scenario 3 - Sustained Burn fight lasting around 4 minutes or longer These are the types of fights that we shine on. Our sustained DPS is higher than anyone else's if we play our cards right, and that is the plan here. There are 2 ideal options to take. --Breakdown of Option 1 00:00 - Fight begins, Guardian of the forest, Falcon Strike, Outrider's Attack, Pack Hunt, Sureshot disc, First Spire 01:30 - Group Guardian of the Forest , Auspice of the Hunter 03:00 - Falcon Strike, Outrider's accuracy Here you will be spamming BoA as it pops with 3-4 nukes between casts. Also, it is ideal here to be a little more mana conservative after First Spire drops. Only using 1-2 nukes between each BoA cast would probably be best, but ideally you want to end the fight out of mana. So don't save too much. --Breakdown of Option 2 00:00 - Fight begins, Guardian of the forest, Falcon Strike, Outrider's Attack, Pack Hunt, First Spire 01:30 - Outrider's Accuracy, Warder's Wrath 03:00 - Falcon Strike, Group Guardian of the Forest 04:00 - Auspice of the Hunter This option is for a long event that doesn't let you use BoA. Falcon Strike, Warder's Wrath, and Auspice are all technically interchangeable here, so you can play with it a little if you want. But other than that, you just want to spam nukes while under First Spire then be mana conservative after that with your nukes. Side Note: If you are going to use a glyph on a fight, use glyph of destruction/cataclysm at the beginning (00:00 in the above examples) of the fight. Glyph of Destruction/Cataclysm is the best glyph for us to use and it stacks with everything. ***Intensity of the resolute*** LINK TO IT HERE Intensity has a lot of stacking issues for us. It doesn't stack well with Guardian of the Forest, Group GotF, and Outrider's Accuracy due to them all having "Increase All Skills Damage Modifier" 's, and it doesn't stack with Auspice because they both increase "Spell Crit Chance". I also don't have Intensity, so thinking of the ideal way to use it is a little difficult and is going to be pure speculation based on the stacking issues. So ! If i had Intensity I think i would use the following combination: 00:00 - Falcon Strike, Outrider's Attack, Pack Hunt, Sureshot disc, Intensity, First/Second Spire 01:00 - Guardian of the Forest, Auspice 03:00 - Falcon Strike, Outrider's accuracy 04:00 - Group Guardian of the Forest This combination avoids all stacking issues and really gets the most out of our abilities. I'd also like to throw out there that I wouldn't recommend using it in "optimized burn" situations. Because Intensity's best attributes (the damage modifier and the spell crit chance increase) have stacking issues with our best abilites, we would actually gain very little from it by stacking it with Guardian of the Forest (<don't forget it has over haste) and Auspice (mgb?). Additionally I'd like to point out that Intensity makes things a lot more flexible. If you don't like the above combination of things, then there's a lot of different combinations you can try out and play with untill you find one you like. General Tips: -Try to end each fight with 0% mana -Try to keep your mana % even with the mob's HP % when reasonable -Be aware of the mechanics of the event -Try to always hit Falcon Strike with shaman epics. This lets you see a visible timer of when the next click should be coming, and they both stack very well. -Set up an audio trigger for shaman epic! <-- this is very important. It will help you a lot in timing things right. In Conclusion: Going to end by saying that the dynamics of today's raids are all very different and we have to judge how to use our abilities given the different circumstances. Very rarely are events as straight forward as dps'ing a single mob. However, I hope this guide will at least help some of you figure out when and how to use our abilities in the different situations. Important and Useful Links: eqoutrider.net a website that lists weapons by ratio a website that lists weapons by calculated dps Written by Blazeing Amazeing on the Bertox server~!@#
This guide is out of date. Spell line up doesn't reflect the DoT revamp. Most of us had already ceased using wind and ash spells by level 85. Since 85 most of us smartened up and placed Bloodlust Aura on block buff in favor of Third Spire of the Pathfinder. And...eww Jolting Blades.
This was a pre-UF guide someone asked me to post that was lying around. I don't really remember much of the spell line ups back then. Feel free to post something better if you remember please.
Out of date or not, its good to read some kind of writeup. Those of us returning could use the information as a starting point...it's tough to find recent guides.
the 2.5 upgrade to the 2.0 is +4dmg and 40hp/mana it is not a useful upgrade once a player loots endgame weapons in TSS
