I got bored after work and created a Heroic Ranger. Also have a lower level ranger but wanted a preview of how they are above 80+. Back when I raided in Veil of Alaris, our rangers use to bow raid mobs down and normally parse well. Is there a rule of thumb given the same level/tier of weapons how much less dps non-disc bow dps is? I was playing around with some light blue and headshot was fun at first but curious how bad/good is bow dps at 90+
In all my years of playing EQ1 (more recently on and off) I never got why they insisted on making rangers 'melee' over archery. As if there aren't enough melee classes. EQ2 got it right eventually with making 80% of rangers power come from the bow but needing to be in melee range to use some melee abilities for the other 20% potential (point blank bow shots helped too). I wouldn't be surprised if they have the same hang ups here though, nonsense like being ranged while wearing heavier-than-cloth armor.
It's because EverQuest isn't/wasn't built well for engaging/endangering ranged combatants, Neiloch. Casters get away with their because of several factors like mana and agro management being things, gotta constantly hammer spells, and significant fragility compared to their melee brethren. Also, they up the design of Endless Quiver AA. So now, if ranged attacks were good, rangers would just sit back plinking away for no agro and very little expenditure of resources and no "risk". It would take a major redesign of how the mobs fight and how the rangers fight for an archery class to be okay.
None of this sounds different from getting the most DPS out of ranged fighting on my ranger. I recall running out of mana and snapping aggro because of said used mana. The 'fragility' argument is pretty weak. Unless you are set up to tank or at least have significant short term and frequent defense abilities getting hit by the mob is still pretty bad. Being ranged and lasting for 2 hits instead of 1 isn't exactly game breaking. Endless quiver is negligible as well now. All it does is help auto while bow 'nukes' use arrows. Lots of games have 'ranged scouts' without needing to have a concern for ammo at all. Its never a good balancing factor anyway, either they have to directly 'pay' for DPS to keep up or worse yet pay to have superior DPS which is 'pay to win' in a very real way. Its an entirely possible and wouldn't need an overhaul, some basic scripting at most.
Well the Term Ranger Means : : a person in charge of managing and protecting part of a public forest : a person in charge of managing and protecting part of a national park : a soldier in the U.S. Army who has special training especially in fighting at close range Full Definition of RANGER 1 a : the keeper of a British royal park or forest b : forest ranger 2 : one that ranges 3 a : one of a body of organized armed men who range over a region especially to enforce the law b : a soldier specially trained in close-range fighting and in raiding tactics So they would also have to rename the class to archer
I guess if you really really pushed it, like artillery Range you could say we are that rofl. EQ turned the Ranger into archers for a short time though and we should actually be close combat masters and raiders. Many Years ago there were more rangers in the we should be melee then archer the last few years that has changed. Archer is not the class i rolled in 99 though.
Archery was legit in the same window where warriors tanked with a 2hander, from Rallos-win till looting PoTime. Several months, if you were one of the bleeding-edge leading raiders who had to wait on fixes to Elemental God battles, less if you were in the second or subsequent waves, all fourteen years ago.
