Agree with Twyxx. I now raid with my ranger after being a long time Coercer and Troub raider. But if you are a ranger, DO NOT have a high level utility class available or you will find yourself being asked to play that utility as much if not more then your ranger. Not that I'm not willing to help "on occasion" when a Coercer or Troub is needed, but my main is my Ranger and that's my toon of choice. If you show an overt amount of willingness to play your alt utility you may eventually find that they have become your defacto main.
Malevolencexx@Nagafen wrote: You sound like me right before SF came out when I finally gave in and betrayed after playing as a ranger from launch. But after being guilded and raiding with the then class dev Aeralik for almost a year. And having him constantly saying how he was never going to fix rangers (ya he was the dev that raided as an assassin) I gave up. Everything you guys talk about and suggest about giving rangers equal utility to make them worth using has been asked for 5 . . 6 . . . 7 years now. With DoV they have done better and evened out rangers with other DPS classes. But they still have no clue on what to do about utility and must all have bot programs making arrows to drain plat from the gain.
Crychtonn wrote: That was my thought too. And although some posters mentioned that the perceived advantage of range doesn't exist in raiding, it most definitely exists when soloing. While an experienced player knows that if they want to raid with an assassin, all they have to do is make a ranger for leveling then betray to assassin, I doubt if that solution will suffice for the devs.
there is a need for range dps in raids specially for the harder encounters with multiple mob spawns and such where melee dps has to run around and looses a lot of damage while range dps can just pivot to the adds/name/whatever. also there are mobs that don't allow melee range damage because of aoe's/effects/whatever. the problem is that rangers don't do as much damage at range as mages do. that's what needs to be fixed, rangers should be a range scout not a melee scout with the option to go range. all melee ca's should be abolished on rangers except for like 2 or maybe.
Honestly if SOE wants to revive the ranger class it wouldn't be hard at all. With some simple changes like the following; Turn Double Arrow AA into Endless Quiver = 100% ammo conservation. Fix all ammo problems - as qouted by Errror 1)Slightly increase our damage. 2)Add a group wide damage proc to Focus Aim 3)Increase the range of our *melee* CA's that are 5m range to 10m universally 4)Make Cat Like Reflexes proc a positional dehate instead. Ranger class fixed. Two Cents, From a Ranger.
Davngr1 wrote: Ranger is for now a range scout with option to *also* go melee. That's good. I don't want the ranger becoming an archer. What seems missing for you is a focus or AA, an *option*, where range dps is increased while greatly decreasing melee dps.
If you want to do proper, T1 DPS as a ranger melee and range aren't options, they're requirements. You will never do top DPS just doing one or the other unless you in some sort of freak scenario or comparing yourself to terrible players. If anything they should be made to lean more on being an archer because there are already 4 other high melee DPS scout classes in the game. We don't need a 5th. Our best hope is what ever they decide to pile on next in terms of prestige/AA skills will further fix us. They aren't going to go back and change old stuff unless its part of some game wide overhaul where ALL the classes get stuff changed. I'd LOVE if they made two lines/options/advanced classes that let rangers pick a DnD style arcane archer or tempest.
Vifarc wrote: As Neiloch said, we are not a range scout with the option to also go melee. When it comes to ranged, we are just better then other scouts on pure range fights, but as we bring nothing to the raid other then dps, and doing any fight where you can't get into range to use melee CA's, you're much better off just bringing another caster in place of that ranger.
Davngr1 wrote: Seiffil@Permafrost wrote: Well we know for a fact they can institute damage bonus determined by range to target, that's how the ranger epic weapon originally worked. 10% bow damage increase if under 25 meters, 20% if under 5 meters. Before they just made it a flat 20% increase in bow damage. So why not something similar but for being 15+ meters away from a target and for all ranged attacks, not just auto attack?
Ahh rangers. Since EQ1 they've had a certain... reputation. Here are a few of my favorite pearls of wisdom: Q: Why does it rain so much in the Karanas? A: Because every time a ranger dies, Karana sheds a tear. Q: How can you tell a ranger tried to break into your house?? A: Your cat is camping his corpse. Q: Why don't rangers get FD? A: The fall to the ground would kill them. Q: How do you know when a ranger has been tanking? A: They're usually standing naked at their bind spot. Q: Why do Rangers get some of the best haste items in the game? A: So they can die faster. Q: Why is ranger armor green and brown? A: Green so they can find their corpse in the dirt and brown so they can find their corpse on the grass. Q: Whats the shortest Ranger joke ever? A: LFG. Q: What is the difference between a ranger and a corpse? A: 30 seconds of combat. Q: What did one ranger say to the other at the soulbinder? A: Do you come here often? Q: Why did the Ranger cross the road ? A: Because the chicken kicked his butt. Q: What did Emperor Crush say when the 100th Ranger tried to solo him? A: DING...!!!!! Q: What do you call a Ranger with over 356 days of play time? A: Masochistic Q: Why do Clerics not heal Rangers? A: It's more mana-efficient to res them. Q: Did you hear about the Ranger who was really tough and was always wanted in groups? A: -And you never will either. Q: How many rangers does it take to change a light bulb. A: None, the bulb was still cooling and killed them instantly. Q: Why do they call them rangers? A: Because no one would play a "RezMe". Q: Did you hear about the ranger who killed Nagafen? A: He got caught in his throat on the way down and he choked to death. A_Random_Guildie says, "What does this drop?" You say, "rangers" A Ranger walks into a bar.... LOADING PLEASE WAIT.
The_Cheeseman wrote: Hah. Need to figure out a way to get "Ranger down!!" in there. I went back to EQ for a bit a few months ago, and seeing "Taunt" in my spell book made me snicker. On the other hand, I got a tell shortly after logging in, asking me to join an exp grinding group, which hadn't happened to my cleric. But that's pretty typical for EQ - people often only wanted a cleric for hard stuff, and didn't want them for grinding. But back on topic, I still think that the devs won't buy any solution that increases a ranger's ability to solo vs. assassin, so I don't think that anything that increases dps will be acceptable to them. With that caveat, I'd like to see rangers get a hate transfer first. Second would be some more utility, preferably some weakened version of abilities of our cousin scouts, the bards, and something useless to us solo (to increase chances of approval from the devs), such as a rez or mana regen.
Tommara wrote: If a dev said 'Well that would help with grouping for rangers and be balanced but it would make them too good at soloing' about an idea I would laugh right in their face at the sheer ignorance of that statement. It is incredibly shortsighted and unnecessary but unfortunately some things do seem to indicate they think that way. The value of soloing is entirely dependent on how good those classes are soloing heroic content. This is because everyone can solo content that is meant for soloing. It's not like old school EQ1 where being able to solo at all was a big deal. There are MANY classes that solo heroic content better than rangers. Even more so with mercs being available if you want to call that soloing. I don't think Rangers need more damage anyway. Hate transfers and "Raid or Group Friend" buffs would easily solve any 'increased soloing' concerns they might mistakenly have. The problem is coming up with utility with a 'ranger' flavor. Accuracy sounds good in concept but even the most hardcore players are a bit lost on how exactly accuracy works. Maybe it should be replaced with a flat chance to have a guaranteed melee hit, regardless of all defensive stats. Call it 'Truestrike' or something.
Honestly I just wish they would remove all minimal distance(s) applied to us for a our CA(s) and ranged auto attack (i.e like our old myth bow, except applied to all CAs as well) One of the most annoying things to deal with as a ranger is various mobs hitboxes. It can place us completely out of range of receiveing heals/cures as well as completely dark out over half of our CA(s) from either being too close or too far. Iirc were literally the only class that gets penalized for being too close and that blows seeing we have to alwasy be within 5m of mobs we face anyways. (i.e our ranged bounus just got elimanated) two cents~
There was maybe a day or two where the myth bows lack of minimum range also effected range CA's. They then proceeded to go out of their way to add minimum ranges to all our ranged CA's. It was odd because there wasn't any outrage over rangers nto havign a minimum range. The game didn't suffer some huge apocalyptic flaw now that rangers could use their bow and ranged CA's at point blank. I would accept most if not all of the 'ranged penalties' like ammo and minimum range if rangers could actually be pure ranged. As it is a top performing ranger is having to manage what is essentially a melee auto attack. If they insist on us being this current hybrid of melee/range they need to ditch ammo and minimum range. Or they can keep those in and make it perfectly viable for us to do/maintain current top DPS at range. One or the other as the current situation is just silly.
One thing that i thought could be added to Rangers to make them more viable in raids, and would also be nothing super over powering, would be adding a Coercive shout type ability. It would make them perfect for OT groups with the adds that we have seen recently with the mem wipe/co-op strike.
Ranger's rock - definitely have issues that dev's could easily correct - but overall I've loved Ranger's since I first rolled one in EQ. If you want to raid as Ranger #1 learn your class - this means constantly learning and trying new things to improve, show up and don't slack - your dps should be high enough for most raiding guilds to appreciate. I play a Ranger in Night Masks on Oasis and would like to point out something I have noticed, if you see similar or drastically different zonewide parses I'd like to hear - this is solely based on my experience and is something I've been curious about for awhile. I have noticed in most named and zonewide raid parses out of the scout dps and sometimes mage dps in raid I am typically #1 zonewide, if not almost always top 3. So when I look at ACT graphs it's very evident atleast the way I play that Rangers do high dps consistently and can maintain that high dps indefinitely - atleast until we run out of arrows. My Ranger's dps graph goes up and stays up , does not dip down very much unless there's a break in fight for whatever reason. Other scout dps (and mage) graphs clearly show more spike damage, much more fluctuation which brings me to conclude a well played ranger is going to give the most steady, consistent scout dps. Theoretically, if it were possible to stack CA's etc I'm willing to bet an all Ranger scout group would put out the most consistent dps of any scout group combinations and the longer the fighter the more this will show. It's the old race between a tortoise and a hare except in this race SOE made the tortoise 10x the size of the hare to keep things equal. If my thinking is correct here having atleast 1 Ranger is very valuable asset to a raid, in fights when other melee's are running around for position a good ranger should still be doing wicked dps and should also thinking 2 steps ahead of where he should be positioned next, minimizing any drops in dps. Would love to hear your thoughts on this as I realize my view is limited based on the guild I'm in and its players.
frggr wrote: In my guild we have five t1s that I would say are all incredibly close in ability. Assassin, ranger, beastlord and two warlocks. There are some fights that favor each class (high movement, big named aoe like eriak for ranger or pile of adds like berik/tagrin for the locks). Overall, though, if you gave everyone the same group setup on an average fight that didn't favor any one class then it would be beastlord slightly above the predators which would be slightly above the warlocks. Other guilds have wizards and summoners that parse in that range as well. Nobody is saying ranger dps isn't good. It's just that it's the same as the other dps classes without bringing as much to the raid as the others. So having a ranger in your raid is fine, but if all else is equal (gear/quality of player) then the raid is better off with any of the other ones.
Twyxx wrote: That's it in a nutshell. Lucky for me quality of player isn't exactly easy to find. Xaiveir wrote: If the last few encounters in PoW are any indication, and if perhaps clarified by the devs a bit more, our Natures Focus group buff may draw more demand especially if they added strikethrough to it. If the mobs in future content have the avoidance of teku and commanders a group buff that increases accuracy and strikethrough could actually be in demand for a melee group.
Xaiveir wrote: There is already a raid class which has that (only) "class defining" ability. Coercive Shout is the Coercer AA End Line (Class Defining) ability. all classes recive a class defining ability on thier class specific AA tree, stealing the class defining ability from another class just to make your class more attractive is a poor way to go about it. Would you be willing to replace Arrow Barrage with Coercive Shout? Becasue having two class defining abilities would in fact be too over-powering. Whether you value Coercive Shout over Arrow Barrage or not is not the point or the part that is overpowering, but the fact that you feel Rangers should have two of these types of class defining abilities is a bit of a problem.
I would like to see a little bit more utility brought to the class. But agree, not a class defining skill. Nor do I want an in combat rez. That is a parse killer since all rez spells take FOREVER to cast. I was thinking more like what Neiloch stated a group buff for accuracy and/or strikethrough. Buffing those two doesn't step on too many toes and yet are still needed and are truely useful. I wouldn't even mind an ammo conservation group buff. That would partially take care of part of a discussion in a separate thread. I do think there are several things out there that are not buffed that well or often that the Ranger could sneak in and get a buff for. Either way, it would be nice to bring a little more utility to the party.
