Actually, I get the impression that SOE looks at the parses of high end raiders only. There is no way that more casual rangers are anywhere close to Summoners (prior to update - not sure now) or assasins. We don't hit nearly as well in either raids or groups. Our DPS is closer to classes that have other functions ie. monks, bruisers, swashies. I parse constantly and usually do at least as well as other rangers - I don't think its 'cause I dont know how to play my class. It goes without saying that the cost of arrows is too high. 6 gold a stack makes for some pretty expensive evenings I usually burn through at least 2k, some nights closer to 3k. I'm not asking to be uber, but things are out of whack right now. SOE's latest change makes things worse for the solo ranger - not me, but still it makes me wonder what the thought process is. This stuff isn't rocket science. Spells like Hawk Dive make me wonder if anyone on the Dev team actually plays a ranger. The answer to the OP? No, we are not T1. Howvever, we are by no means the most messed up class. Anytime I am feeling sorry for myself - I just look at Warlocks
WOOH! Now that I got some caffiene into my system I can actually make a valid post without getting all crazy on y'all Sorry bout that. BTW Dirtgirl, I needed that laugh. Really cheered up my day, lol. Now, onto the meat of the message. Prior to the update, as a fact, I had trouble competing with summoners as far as DPS went, unless I went all out. This is mainly because they have roughly 2/3 damage potential as a T1 DPS class and their pets have roughly 1/2 to 2/3 damage potential as a T1 DPS. These are actually back-upped by parses of me in a recent group traveling to the Living Tombs from the Sinking Sands. This seperation of damage allows them to get closer to their full potential without worrying about pulling aggro from the main tank. Aggro is not out main problem, but it is for Warlocks Now, this equilibrium of damage actually exceeds the T1 damage area, which is what I think the dev team meant when they said Summoners had reached "new areas of damage". A summoner by himself cannot compete with our DPS, same can be said with their pets. The combination, however, allowed them to get better DPS. . . Now that the new LU is out, and their pets are nerfed, things are slightly on par. The problem I think is not that WE, as rangers, are under-powered, as we seem to be doing good (not great, not horrible). The problem is that certain game mechanics are only limiting us, similar to ways the aggro mechanic is limiting Warlocks. While our CA damage (the damage component only) does not need to be altered IMHO, certain in-game mechanics need to be altered to allow us to fully utilize our CA's. Maybe reducing Auto--attack delay (aint happenin) or letting casting timers NOT interfere with Auto-attack (also aint happenin) or something along the lines. . . So like I said, we all have problems (as in all classes). It all has to do with mechanics, as the "intended" spell effects seem to be balanced out. Anyway, as far as raids have gone (which I have been in a few ), I have pretty consistantly been within top 3 or 4, with the monk or bruiser occasionally getting up there to competing level, but ONLY because of proc bonuses from other classes! A recent series of parses indicate that around 8% of Monk DPS comes solely from ONE WARLOCK SPELL called Venemous Runes or something of the sort. . . Wish that was casted on me Anyway, I know I just screwed a whole bunch of points I made earlier, but my bipolarity was kicking in one post earlier, so completely disregard that post It's getting late, and I'm not entirely sure what point I was trying to reach now. . . Lol, sorry for the poor souls that managed to reach this far
It's really two different questions. The OP asked if we're T1 dps. We're not. We're a bit below it, that's just the fact. You only notice it on the high end, sure, because we're not like 50% behind more like 10-20%. It doesn't mean we're not fun to play. That is a different question entirely and I think most people still like playing rangers - that's why we are here. I'm with you that we seem to be getting a bit [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn]y lately but I think that's just because we're feeling kinda ignored now. (There are other classes which are even more ignored so not saying it's just us)
While raiders may take up a small percentage of the poplutation (think its much higher than you claim) it is quite valid to examine them when comparing classes. Is it more accurate to compare casual players whose equipement and skills can vary to such high degrees that they can be completely different, or is it more accurate to compare classes that are pretty much as high as they can go with full masters? Casual players will almost never be equal to each other in this regard, while fully equiped characters are as equal as your going to get. You can not have a fair comparison unless the classes have equal equipment and equal skills. When all is equal I guarantee we do NOT match up. Being just ok is not good enough. Also, if we never discuss what is wrong with the class the devs will never know what to look at.
AMEN! Give that man a cookie!!!! Plus, if you want someone vocalizing what may or may not be wrong with your class, would you choose a 5 hour a week casual level 40 - or an end-game raiding, 30-40 hour a week player who has had the time to master the class and thus pick it apart? ** Note, not necessarily referring to myself here as I do not sit and agonize over DPS graphs...It's just too depressing. But there are those here who do, and they've taken the time to try enlighten the rest of the community as well as the Devs. In the end, it is just a game, and you should have fun playing. But remember, everyone has their own idea of what makes it fun. And seeing an entire class being excluded from end-game "fun" (even if its only rarely) does not give us warm fuzzies.
Xney, if you put half the effort into making yourself better or trying to be a better Ranger as you spend on the forums [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn]ing about our class you might not be half bad... Now to support my statements, we do an overall parse after every raid. Thats every fight for the whole zone parsed together. That includes the wipes and the trash mob, which adimittedly i don't even really try on. Well I'm in the top 6 spots every single time. Thats anywhere from 30-35mins of fighting(total fighting time) to well over an hour in some zones.. on a resent Lyceum raid, i averaged 848dps for 41mins of fighting. Right along with the other "T1" classes. I was only out done by a 'Sin(105dps more and a necro(35dps more, pre nerf btw)... the next 4 spots were all T1/T2 mixed with T3 bruzier that is insane dps for a tank class.. So either you dont know our class well enough or your not trying hard enough. BTW i still only have about half Adapt3's and Masters CA's, the rest are adapt 1 and 2 app4's !!!! Like i've stated before, use GOOD stuff you'll get GOOD results. Play poorly, use poor equipment you'll get poor results. Of course it costs us more to use the GOOD stuff.. /sigh hey Devs, how about adding a class quest with a reqard of an Endless Quiver so we don't go broke trying to play our roles.. NO other class PAYS for its DPS like we have to. :smileysad:
If you really want to know, go look at the rosters for the big boys like Dissolution (that's on Nek server) and Ne Plus Ultra (Guk), and look at all the Rangers on their line ups. That will give you a good idea what the hard numbers are saying at the top of the game.
Questions that will never be answered by a dev - 1: - How much of a dps %age is t1 supost to do against t2 assuming the player/gear factors are the same. 2:Will the devs allow for AutoAttack damage to continue while using a melee CA, while out of auto attack range. (One of our classes bigger problems right there imo) 3: - Will endgame itemization change to compensate for double attacks from other classes? Now to start, when you are in a group. You are top dps when you burst that dps, you always will be. Your CA/auto attack damage will always be top when you burst that, calling for that to be upgraded is going to lead to people calling our community whiners etc. Now ask yourself, where is the dps dropping and what can be changed to put everything on par. The answer is right infront of us, and a easy fix. Its our recasts on our archery that needs to be changed IMO. This would allow our class not to be an overwhelming dps in the typical group, or solo. But, would allow our class to burst damage more often effectively giving us higher dps on raids bridging the gap between assassin/wizard to where we stand. If sony decided to make icecommet a 1 minute recast - immagine what the wizard dps would be on raids? Or, if sony decided to make an assassins dot's 45s-1m recasts, what would there dps be on raids? My two copper anyways
I do know how to play my class, thank you. And yes, I have put in a lot of time into learninig it and getting gear, that's how I know we can't measure up as well. I did a pickup raid this weekend into Lyceum and I parsed #1. Oh gee that means we're fixed right? No, doesn't mean squat. #1 there's that bug where auto-attacks aren't going off in chaining CAs, #2 in a pickup raid group you have no idea about anybody's skills, and #3 who knows what went on in the zone. That is why it's so important to look at the top end guilds (which I am not a member of, not geared up to that level). They have pushed classes as far as they can go, and will have the best idea of how a class stacks up and what the weaknesses are. So far, I haven't seen any top guild who likes rangers. Doesn't that say it all?? Sure, I can parse high but I probably have better gear than all but 1 or 2 DPS in that zone, simply because I have put in the time. The top end raiding guilds put in a lot more time than me. Plus, like in any parse, you have to take into account what is happening. The wizards were out a fight because they had to root mobs. If you only take the fights they were active in, the top wizard parsed #1 and conjuror #2, both good players and well geared. We had 4 rangers in this raid (kinda weird I know) and I parsed 33% higher than the next two, all level 70. It doesn't mean I'm an uber ranger, I'm not. But I do know what I'm doing. I know there is at least 1 ranger on our server who is just totally geared out in relic and such. I'd love to see what he could do, but I'm pretty sure it's less than the assassin in the same gear. In a good guild raid I get beaten easily by several classes, although still looking at the post-LU24 world. You don't have to be an uber raider to know of our problems. It's obvious when you look at our AA line, -specifically, the lack of double-attacks - and compare our combat arts. There is one good unique ability rangers get (storm/rain of arrows) versus several for assassins. There is no benefit to having long-casting CAs in range in terms of how much damage they do versus the shorter-casting melee CAs. So OK I post about my problems, should I just be silent and pretend they don't exist? My brother who's a good player and is leveling an assassin alt is going to be at my dps level at 65 probably, with fewer masters and lesser gear. That can't be right, but it is how it is. I don't pretend to know the most about rangers. That's why we have the high end guilds. They know best. There are no rangers in them, it's not because we're ok! p.s. if you take all this as "whining" then you should look at some other class boards.
I find it amusing he tells us how great he is and how we suck cause we see issues with the class yet his sig complains about our damage... That is all.
In all of the parses I've seen posted in all the forums, this is the only one I would put any stock into. Who cares about the DPS on a 30 second fight or even a 2 minute fight? Short duration DPS numbers are worthless if you plan to do any comparisons. Guild Leaders and Raid Leaders who look at all those short duration DPS numbers to determine the preferred classes are short handing their guilds and raids. Rangers are still one of the best DPS classes in the game and because we can stay outside of most AE's, we save a lot on repair kits (almost enough to pay for our arrows and poisons--ok, that's a stretch).:smileyhappy:
If rangers really had an advantage on jousting mobs you would see rangers in the top guilds. Let's examine the advantages of rangers during a joust: 1) we can keep ranged auto-attack going 2) we can cast ranged CAs while jousters can't It's tempting to look at this and think we should just be great in that situation, but it's not true. #1, any class with double attack will kill us with ranged auto-attacking even with our bonuses and procs. This includes most of the melee classes besides assassin, so most classes who have to joust will actually do ranged DPS which is pretty decent. If you have to joust, you just turn on your ranged attack while waiting, cast your manastones, etc. You don't really lose a lot of time. #2, in terms of casting CAs, the biggest dps factor related to what we are talking about is recast time overall. It doesn't take a huge amount of time to unload your melee CAs. Thus, although you can't be casting your melee CAs while jousted away, they are still refreshing. As long as you have cast them while in melee range, it is not a huge dps hit to be away from the mob as long as they are refreshing! You will take a hit to dps only if you have melee CAs up that you can't use due to being away. I know on the parses this weekend, it didn't make a huge difference whether the mob was a jousting mob or not. The overall dps didn't drop much. And that wasn't a well-tuned raid group, just a decent one.
I'll put stock in his dps numbers too. I believe he did 850 dps. And guess what? 850 dps sucks. If 850 dps placed him among the top dps'ers in his raid...then the rest of the raid members' dps sucked even more. Note I didn't say "he sucked" as a person or as a ranger. Notice I didn't say the other players in his raid sucked as persons or as their classes. I said their dps sucked. Too bad he didn't show the same restraint posting about Xney. Look, I understand that everyone has their own opinions regarding rangers and dps based upon their playstyle and their experiences. But when players from higher end guilds are posting about problems with ranger dps at the high end, it's for a reason: Namely that ultimately the shortfall in our dps will begin to affect players who aren't high-end raiding as others begin to be better at raiding and and/or realize that rangers aren't living up to their "tier-1 dps" billing and bring no offsetting utility to raids. In my guild, unless you do well over 1k dps, you don't even make the top 10 on the dps list. And that's epic fight after epic fight after epic fight. I do between 1100 and 1200 dps every fight....and I'm generally nowhere near the top of the dps charts in my guild. Oh sometimes I peak higher and make it to #2 or #3 on the list. But that's seldom and due to some really serendipitous series of events. So when you as a ranger can come here and tell me that you are routinely averaging around 1400-1500 dps on epic fights, then you'll get my attention because then you can make a serious argument that rangers are tier-1 dps. But if all you can do is tell me you're doing 850 dps and that 850 dps makes you tops in your guild, then we aren't even talking about the same subject.
This is exactly what I'm talking about. You're comparing your per-fight dps with his total dps. It's apples and oranges. 850 dps over the course of 41 minutes is very good. 1200 dps over the course of a single encounter is expected. I'm lvl 64 and I can do 1100 in a single encounter lasting just a few minutes. But over the course of an entire raid, with dying, reviving, rebuffing, moving to the next mob, taking time outs to refresh power, etc., no way will this come close to 850 DPS over the course of 41 minutes. If you want to know how you really stack up, forget about dps completely and look at the total damage dealt. At the end of the day, who produced the most total damage? I'm just saying that if you want to measure your worth in a raid by how much damage you produce, then measure it by how much damage you produce, not by how much damage you do in single encounters.
Read his post again. He disn't say he did 850 dps over the course of a fixed period of time that included down time. He said he did 850 dps in "41 minutes of fighting" I can guarantee he didn't do 850 dps during a protracted period in a raid zone that included any and all downtime/non-fighting time. As far as your point about the importance of total damage done or some mythical dps "per raid"...I think the idea is worthless. A raid doesn't fight zones, it fights encounters. The only meaningful measure of a dps-class's worth is dps on a per-encounter basis. But we can even set aside that issue. If I do 1200 dps on every encounter during a raid I will do.....wait for it....an average of 1200 dps during the entire raid (measured during the fights...not while the raid waits for someone to come back from an LD). So the distinction you are trying to draw is meaningless anyway.
I think you only really notice the shortcomings of the class in raiding and in solo play. Soloing is tough with a ranger, even in good gear, at the high levels. For comparison, try your friend's assassin. In group situations and most soloing, we do plenty of DPS to accomplish anything in the game. In the remaining 5% of situations (if you do those things), you really feel like you come up against a ceiling compared to other pure DPS classes and that's not right. If you spent 90% of your time raiding then yes it would be very frustrating, hence why many raiders switched to other classes. So, I'm happy being a ranger most of the time in groups. When the raid time comes, then you feel a little gimped. You could say the glass is half full on most nights.
Rangers are about T1.5 - 1.7 DPS. We're not the best and not where we should be. But not so bad it will hurt a raid for having one or even two over other classes. As for looking at extended DPS for the entire raid. I'd question using that as a guideline. People won't be going all out or trying their best the entire raid, especially on trash mobs. People will slack off some or go LD and not be in every fight among many other factors. The only DPS numbers that mean a thing are against raid named mobs. Trash mobs are just for short term bragging rites on who got lucky to get off skills faster or crit more.
Good raiding guilds will try hard on trash mobs because it makes the raids go faster, sometimes noticably faster. If people are slacking all the time on fights it can make them take a looooong time. If slacking hurts overall dps 25% then your 4 hour raid is now a 5 hour raid. I think you could find argument that rangers *do* hurt the raid, if you are trying to the toughest fights and your "slots" are being taken up by classes which could provide better benefits, either in terms of buffs or better dps, or both. Do they hurt enough that most raids would not take rangers? No, but the argument is still true.
