So, what I am getting is ranger's are no longer potent with a bow. I can tell u first hand it's bull! it's all how you play a ranger yes they are best DPS with melee but to say range dps sucks is just plain wrong. autofire is one thing then the right arrow and the right quiver.... from there it's a multibind to spam the right spells. and AA's to use while Bowing. Doing it correctly can result in 50k dps soloing with amps you can easily have a bow burn around 80-90k Melee will be higher yes but that can take a lot more focus and also depends on amping not to mention what are your stats..... if your ranger's stats suck then you are literally wasting a spot in group if they don't have a high attack and Hi dex they pretty much have a suck to them. Not to say this isn't the same for other classes when it comes to stats but if you want good bowing you need high attack a good bow & arrow and a good quiver not sure what else to add here
Melee is stronger than archery. If you are going to spend the time focusing on the ranger using a multi bind key etc. or not, does not change that Melee is stronger. Now, our archery is not all *that* bad, but it is not a proper comparison to look at auto attack Melee vs. multi bind casting, Bullseye Disc burning archery. If you are going to compare under disc, then compare disc'd archery to disc'd Melee. If you are going to be hammering a multi bind key for archery, compare it to hammering that same key meleeing. Of course, if you want a real "feel good" comparison for archery, compare ours to that of a warrior, rogue, or knight!
Rangers epic is a melee weapon in this game. The term "Ranger" conjures someone using a range weapon no? With that being said, could DEVS please look at making epics scale....Id love to use a 2hs and do as much damage as my 1 handers because im using my EPIC WEAPON! cmon man! Its not rocket science! Make epic weapons epic again! AT END GAME LEVELS!
Ranger doesnt connotate Range dps 1.a keeper of a park, forest, or area of countryside. 2.a member of a body of armed men, in particular.
when you read ranger in EQ, think Aragorn with sword and healing and tracking, not Robin Hood with a bow and, like, friends.
The Ranger epic 2.0 was originally a bow. However, it was changed to a melee weapon at the last minute in testing due to ranged dps haters in the top tier guilds that were BETA testing the content. That group, as a whole, looked down upon the Bow using ranger and strived to separate themselves from a play style which they deemed lazy and one that only poor players used. So the epic was changed last minute from a rather nice looking bow with an excellent graphic to the generic uprgaded copy of the 1.0. At the time there was no autofire, no arrow spells. If you wanted to attack with a ranged weapon you had to press the ranged attack button each time, or use the 3rd party autofire program. We, as a class, that people still call a melee class, did not receive our first melee disc until level 100. (Discounting Warder's Wrath at 69, that was not a true melee disc, it fell short on so many levels.) We were forced to shoehorn in an Archery Disc for out burns for 19 expansions, or 12 years. I don't consider the Ranger a melee dps. Even the current disc falls short on producing enough dps to consider us a melee class, a good burn will show that more than 50%+ of our damage comes from spells, if your parse doesn't show the same then you as a player are seriously under-performing in your spell casting on a burn. Now, all that being said. We could use more Ranged DPS increases either through static damage aa's or activated endurance attacks that are ranged based. Bows need to have their ratio increased by a factor of at least 1. The current ratio on an auged bow is 9, with 2 damage augs. It should be at least 10, and even that would put it behind 2handers with ratios approaching 11.6 or higher. As for parses with a bow, you can still put up a 300k parse with a bow if you so desire, but due to the way manaburn augments your damage, it would be higher with melee.
Rangers used to be great sustained ranged DPS during the SoL/PoP/GoD era. Was nice to be able to range AoE's and not deal with jousting. Obviously melee was superior after Trueshot disc expired and for fights that had no ranged AoE. Has that been nerfed and useless? Curious for TLP - don't care about anything in this game past probably Omens.
A 60 Ranger with EQ/AM3, using AoW Bow and the Blessed Guardian Arrow should be non-crit max hitting for around 695 (I think) before you consider MotM mitigation. Based on the delay of 45, overcap hasted and realizing quivered haste due to the delay on AoW bow, the DPS increase should still be pretty substantial from where rangers parse right now. During Trueshot, that non-crit max jumps to 1426 for 2 minutes. Few fights last less than the duration of Trueshot in Velious, so I doubt Luclin will be an "Improvement" in that regard. Luclin also has a few rooted mobs in VT where you lose bonuses to ranged damage, two encounters that also require bane weapons as well. If you get your hands on the akheva bane bow however, you should have some fun parsing in VT. Walling doesn't seem to be as much of an issue these days compliments of changes to push, so there is always that. On the flip side, there aren't many AE's to range in Luclin like there are in PoP where its more about DPS fights than endurance fights. All said, rangers should come into their own on the parses during discs, but in these longer duration fights I expect to see in Luclin, time becomes a factor in the return on simply focusing on bowing. Rogues should prevail simply because they're backstabbing for the entire duration of a fight. Its unclear if monks will continue to own parses as weapons improve for Rogues, but I wouldn't be surprised to see geared Rogues start owning some parses. Nice boxed latent damage though for bowing rangers. Play a cleric and just turn boxed rangers to autofire for easy DPS you don't have to do anything with - just stick em in a corner within LoS of the tank location. I haven't tested to see if the ranged damage gets mitigated like normal melee damage, but I'm presuming it does despite coming through as non-melee damage. I'll probably fill a quiver or two with the steel guardian arrows (got to skill up fletching anyways!), slap avatar on my soon to be 60 rangers with AoW bows and see how they parse during TS on AoW: AoW is a pretty solid measure of what Luclin raid mobs will be mitigating at.
Yes.... EoK (and only EoK) brought the bow back to the front. Provided you stay close enough for Squall and Kicks to hit. -Rat
