Rangers, Rogues, Berkerers and Shadowknights

How many did you retire this week? How many were on gold accounts?

Me, 4 gold rangers, one silver; 0 rogues (I just use them to make campfires,) 1 gold berserker who never got a chance to live up to her potential, 2 gold SKs.

Also will be letting 3 accounts go silver as they come up on their anniversaries.


Lee of Povar

My main setup in eq *includes* 2 mages and a ranger... I'm still playing just as much as before. I don't approve of the beam target cap nerf (because i used it before beam exp was a 'thing' but I also do not approve of all the fake mages that popped up after beaming became a 'thing' and ran around acting like they were awesome at teh everquest because they were able to mass kill mobs that effectively did not fight back.

Despite the nerfs I am still happy with my mages, beaming was NEVER the primary perk of being a mage, it was not even a top 5 perk, I realize this post does not list mages but it may as well have since it was nerfed just as hard.

That being said, in regards to rangers, the only thing i ever use headshot for was old raid bosses, all the nerf means is that it will now take me longer to kill hatchet in demiplane, but in exchange for hatchet taking me longer to kill my ranger will have gained some situational passive sustained DPS. Overall the assassinate / headshot style nerfs aren't so much nerfs as they are exchanging one decent ability for another. Rogues and zerkers benefit from this change far more than rangers but I think overall it's a pretty powerful change.

Ranger's in general couldn't be more indifferent about the changes.

I really don't see how this is a negative. You can now use the class abilities on mobs that are level 99 and lower. I play all those classes and the swarming/pleveling is just old at this point. It really takes you away from the normal game. Was getting tired of it.

It was wrong that a handful of classes can power level others no?? Plus once we level next expansion, all the assassination, decap/hs would have been worthless. This is a great plus for those classes really, I'm surprised they did this to be honest.

One ranger in my guild likes it but he always uses a merc tank. I'm concerned my merc tanks will not survive in Heroic Adventurers. I'm going to be playing wizards and magicians. Not sure where yet. My alts? Well, people can wait for buffs. Better yet, they can install a buff vendor NPC in the lobby.

No one in my guild has left and there wasn't any chatter in /gu hinting at it either. Not with the NTtB patch or this one.

I actually resubbed my other 3 accounts, which include a ranger and berzerker. I probably won't play the zerker much since i mainly used him for PL, but for all the nerdraging that went on here, i don't know anyone who actually quit because of this patch.

I started a new SK, and still love my ranger and rogue. /shrug. Still great classes.

I have a rogue, ranger, sk, and mage. Nothing has changed for me, except the ranger got all the stat and regen (hp/mana) AAs. I am keeping all three gold accounts until the sky actually hits me on the head.

My sk is still gold account but along with these changes and the dire Cotf t1b release I wont be spending anymore money in the marketplace(spent about 150 dollar last year).

Real Rangers are indifferent to the changes. (HS was a cheap parlor trick)
Best I can say, is that a nice "bone" would be to open up HS to anything with a head - so our 2 melee archery spells might prosc for the damage a bit more.
The tank mercs are pathetic.
That said - dump all the AA you can into the tank merc - it does make a difference.
They can do the CotF Tier 1 HA's. for the most part. Level 100 tank merc - single pulls - don't get crazy.
-Rat

I can use a chanter to pull. I heard that merc AAs helped.

Still one round of dailies wears me. Two rounds will mean I have to go rest. Guess those level 95 buffers will never get 100. Not that temples were any good for that.

About 50/50 from what I have seen, some have quit, others came back to test stuff out. I would say SK's are pretty happy, Rangers/Zerkers/Rogues are upset and or switching in droves, but many of them are playing still. I never used decap on my Zerker alt so I'll keep playing her. Mages don't care, they are still the best class ever.

Clerics honestly got the shaft worse than anyone did.

And Cod knows many of us tried to speak to that before hand - and not just Clerics.
-Rat

Indeed, Clerics are even more neutered than before It saddens me.

I like the changes myself. (100 ranger alt who has HS'd for a couple of years)

The reason this is a big issue now is because SOE left this mechanic go unchecked for way too long. Had they changed this when they started seeing spreadsheets of experience gains for those classes skyrocket early on, players would've have been okay with these changes I think. People just got too comfortable with the abilities and ended up playing the whole game that way.

If you played EQ to soley just swarm kill mass amounts of light blue mobs and quickly level up your alt in a few days, then I would quit too. They removed the one thing that kept you playing this game. However, from SOE's perspective and everyone that isn't those swarm classes, it really wasn't healthy for the game. (among tons of other stuff)

I rolled a Ranger alt because I realized that as a tank running another tank class as an alt was not too bright. I was looking for a could solo, could likely get groups, and had a skill useful to an on the same account main (in this case tracking).

AA Grant -
IMO level 85 and approximately 6000 mostly granted AA;s is the new level 1. I was outright angry what that meant for my level 77 Ranger. So before the patch level 92 2000AA's nearly best group gear Ranger instead.

The not played for 2 years Pally alt - thanks for the AA's maybe (probably not) I'll play him.

The nerfs -
So much for the can solo aspect. So far even burning a half-hour LoTD roughly 3/4 blue bubble per hour in a 4 hour session. That's roughly a yellow bubble a week/a level per month. I'll continue trying different zones with and without a healer merc and see if I can do better.

However atm unless groups that I do not expect to materialize (my sons asked me if EQ was stil EQ after the grants and anticipated Heroic Characters. I said it was. Not interested was their reply) suddenly appear teh Ranger is headed to the closet. I grind enough for my main.

The last patch may make some not renew there sub but some other will subscribe again. Personally. i rather see those people go and quit coz i am so tired of seeing them whine all day on general because they cant mass murder anymore.

Like Falos said about fake mages, there is a ton of fake zerkers and rangers that got PLed recently for the only purpose to be able to PL back all day long spamming general WTS PL and the number was just increasing every day. /wave farewell at those people!

You could not even travel in FM or Ground with out moonwalking because there is like 3-4 PLers pulling a sector of the zone. I play War/cleric/bard, i can still mass murder but that was never my thing. I will pull by waves of 3to6 mobs constantly but thats about it even so I tested if PL was still possible, PLing was never my thing and I hate the concept of making someone pay to play with you. If you can call that playing...

I personally think clerics are the most versatile class out there, you got the joy of everything in one class.

The absolutely ONLY reason that SOE has looked into it now is because of Heroic Characters. They stand to profit from Heroics Toons in real $$ terms.
Why would they keep in these abilities that allows Alts/Players to quickly gain levels? It would be at odds with their marketing.
This is what you call "Market Monopoly" - don't have a competitve product yourself?, then cancel everyone else's so you're the only market in town.

Please don't be fooled about reasons such as "lag" , "health of the game". It's been going on now for umpteen dozen years, and now sudden it's a problem. - Yeah right!