I’m an 80th level ranger, with about 150 AA’s. I’ve mainly soloed, or grouped with three family members. Recently I’ve started reading these forums and downloaded the Advance Combat Tracker. I seem to be doing about 1200 DPS, which, from what I’ve read, is very low. I have shard armor, a shard bow, and a master crafted sword. My Strength is 766, Agility 608, and Intelligence is 242. My normal solo style is to cast a large Combat Arts, followed by Snaring Shot, then the rest of my Combat Arts. In group, I usually use my Combat Arts as quickly as possible. I do use the highest level poison I can, normally doing about 1000 points a hit. How do I increase my DPS?
Heya, maybe I can help ya a bit First thing u need to do is not spam your combat arts like you say you do. You need to time your auto attacks and use your CA's in between them. when you engage a mob, make sure u stand in the sweet spot where u can use both your ranged attacks and your melee attacks. Wse ur ranged first obviously then use melee while u wait for ranged to refresh. Make sure you make use of your stealth ranged attacks too as they are pretty big hitters combo them with sneak attack(the backstab that puts you in stealth). But always wait for auto attacks. Open fights with bloody reminder thats a huge combat art for us. make sure youre using focus aim when ur unleashing hell on the mobs with your ranged attack combos. Download from eq2interface an auto attack timer bar(profit ui comes with one) or set up ACT to ding when auto attacks go off. this will raise your dps the most. Secondly, get your epic. period Third u need to get better weapons. if u don't raid, which im guessing you don't. there are some easily obtainable weapons, like the sebilite croaking dirk which increases your poisons damage. lastly, search around make sure ur aa setup is spec'd for dps, master 2 focus aim.get all adept 3 if u don't have them. and theres a list of non raid ranger gear on these forums that you can look for and try to get some of them. hope this helps ya a bit, and good luck!
Thanks for the information. I’m working on my epic, and just purchased the dirk, which already seems to be helping. All my combat arts are at Adapt III with one or two Master I. Now, let’s assume I’m an idiot. How do I set Advanced Combat Tracker to tell me when I’ve auto attacked? I just attacked a couple of creatures by clicking on Ranged Attack, and didn’t see any text that indicated I was auto attacking, only the damage I was doing. Once I have set the beeper, what should I be doing in combat? Start with a combat art, like Hidden Shot, then wait for the beep for the auto attack. My current bow has an 8 second delay, so after the beep, cast as many combat arts as I can before the 8 second are finished? Let the bow auto attack again, then continue with combat arts for another 8 seconds, and so on? Again, thanks for the help.
I'm not a Ranger.....but I play one on EQ2......sometimes. My main is a Troub but I can offer you some advice as I also have a 80 Ranger with about 185+ AA. First if you are comparing DPS numbers you need to know if you are comparing raid/group DPS or solo DPS. Rangers are obviously going to excel at raid/group over solo because you will use more attacks. What I normally do in a raid/group situation is close to 5m which seems to be the sweet spot where you can use both your ranged and melee CA's. I try to land Bloody Reminder and get in Ranger Blade. Then pop Focus Aim and go to town with the Ranged CA's. By the time all of those are on Focus Aim has dropped and you can go back to reapplying Bloody Reminder and using your melee based CA's. I tend to make two hotbars for my melee CA's, one for solo play and one for group/raid play. The group/raid bar are all macro's with the command /autoattack 2 following each art. This allows you to stay in Ranged attack mode and if you have your Epic is really where you want most of your auto attack damage to come from. Safana has a nice guide on EQ2Flames which helped me a lot in learning the class: http://www.eq2flames.com/rangers/42...-dps-guide.html
Safanah's post on the Flames is a very good ranger resource, particularly for newer players trying to refine their play style. Instead of worrying about getting ACT to parse your log and beep at you (it's an event trigger you set up on "You HIT", etc), I would 100% recommend getting the AutoAttackBar mentioned above (here: http://www.eq2interface.com/downloa...oAttackBar.html). Being able to visually see how long until your next autoattack is infinitely better than hearing when one occurs, then mentally keeping track of when the next one is due. We are paying so much attention to helping you get your autoattacks worked out because they are, by far, our most important attack.... doing somewhere around 30-40% of our total DPS. Because of this, the number one best thing you can do to increase your DPS is to refine your playstyle such that your autoattack hits on time, every time. If you can't squeeze in another combat art before an autoattack is due, you're better off waiting until the autoattack happens before casting the combat art.
I've got a handful of random noob questions as far as my ranger goes. 1.) I see alot of people say to time auto attacks. What if the mobs are dying even before I can spam all my CAs, aren't I better off just spamming pure CAs for the greatest damage? 2.) Of the 3 playermade arrow types, does one of them consistently parse higher for damage than the others? I've honestly been too lazy to parse it myself but over the course of trying each type briefly, it seems like the lowest damage +to hit/+range ones work the best. 3.) Are the debuffs actually worth using? Or am I better off just ignoring them to get more attacks in? 4.) I planned to pick the Crippling Shot (or whatever it's called) for my M2 choice in T8, but I'm curious what others have chosen? 5.) The epic weapon shows no minimum range, does this mean you can get right up the mob's butt and use all the ranged CAs without getting the annoying 'too close' message? That is all for now but I will post more if I think of any.
Xoris wrote: All good ideas here. You got the dirk now go but buy ranger's lava hardened blade or something like that. It is attuneable and drops in Najenas. Nice little ranger blade. +2 ranged crit, +2 dps I think. Remebmer you are not hitting anything with your melee weapons so, the damage rating on them does not mean squat. Look for ranged bonus's on the weapons since that is what you use them. Hell use a spoon if it has ranged crit on it
Ranja wrote: Ack, after playing my ranger I have noticed this is exactly what makes the class fall into the same trap as summoners. Waaaaaaay too many people are lazy players and sit back and only use their bow, or pet if a summoner, and give both classes a very bad reputation.
StaticLex wrote: Ranja means that rangers do not auto attack with their melee weapons, which is the ONLY thing that the damage rating of a weapon effects. You can have a melee weapon with a rating of 5 and your combat arts will still hit for the same amount of damage.
Huntress Jellica wrote: If you aren't auto attacking with melee weapons between your melee CAs then it looks you really are one of these rangers giving the class a bad reputation.
StaticLex wrote: Apparently you are one of those people that know NOTHING about rangers. Please get out of this forum and stop giving people looking for advice wrong information. I'd like to know how I top the parse, or am in the top 3 on the parse, consistently on every single pull in every single raid, if I don't know anything about the class and am one of those "giving it a bad reputation." To the person asking questions, let me clarify something that StaticLex, in his apparently BOUNDLESS wisdom can't understand... Never, EVER auto attack with your melee weapons. You are a RANGER, you use your BOW to auto attack. We are not assassins, swashbucklers, brigands, or any other melee DPS class. We are rangers, and that means you auto attack with your bow, and nothing else. Use your melee combat arts, but be sure to turn ranged auto attack back on after using your melee stuff. Auto attacking with your daggers, swords, or what-have-you is only going to decrease your dps, not improve it. And, since we NEVER auto attack with our melee weapons, you would probably be better off finding a good ranger shield since we don't need 2 melee weapons. Some suggestions.. http://www.lootdb.com/eq2/item/1542749703 - Shield of the Assassin (kind of a misleading name, since assassins DO auto attack with their melee weapons and thus would never use a shield over another weapon) http://www.lootdb.com/eq2/item/-1523288139 - Buckler of Deadly Chaos (no stats on Lootdb, but it has +4 ranged/melee crit, and a proc for an additional 45 DPS.. amazing shield, I have this and I love it) http://www.lootdb.com/eq2/item/-1817601366 - Roundshield of the Vault (again no stats listed on Lootdb, but it's something like +2 RDA and RC, maybe some DPS, not entirely sure) Just to reiterate from what I said before, StaticLex.. get out, and don't come back. /wave byebye!
Huntress Jellica wrote: That might be a little on the harsh side. He was asking some good "new ranger" questions, and I think he probably misspoke when he assumed we meant "no autoattacks between melee CAs".... StaticLex, you misspoke when you critisized Jellica, right? Personally, I'm gonna take Ranja's advice and go find a spoon with good ranger stats. It will be perfect for my Indiana Jones (and the Temple of Spoon?) costume...
StaticLex wrote: seriously.... Thanks Huntress for protecting me while I was gone..lol. Static,You are the one that knows nothing about rangers and are giving us a horrible rep if you are using your melee auto-attack, bad bad news. Please go read some of the threads on ranger's and educate yourself, get some humility and apologize...so much self ownage in one post it is making my eyes bleed. I will be waiting
Webin@Befallen wrote: Harsh? Perhaps.. except StaticLex isn't the one asking for advice. He's handing out advice which is 100% incorrect. He seems to do this on lots of different class forums (conjuror and warden come to mind) and I hate to see him spreading misinformation here as well. Plus, I'm supposed to be the "mean" person in my guild, so I have a reputation to protect y'know?
Webin@Befallen wrote: Not at all. He/she/whatever jumped across forums like a spaz in some juvenile attempt to talk smack. If they can't take it as well as they can dish it, then I guess they should probably just shut up and go away. Now, the reason I made the comment that I did is because in my experience playing the ranger class so far AND watching other people play theirs, trying to jocky for a position to get a ranged auto attack in between melee CAs will cost more time and DPS than simply letting your melee weapons swing. If you're parked behind a name or something then sure, you can probably get away with firing a bow shot between CAs instead. The bottom line is with this class I'd rather be prepared with great melee weapons so that I'm not wasting DPS if I can't get range for a bow shot or am stuck in a fight that requires stacking.
Between, Jellica, Ranja, and I, we have over a decade of experience playing the Ranger class, much of it in raid situations (the other two much more than me). Personally, I have 245 days played, and my ranger is still my ONLY level 80 toon. I understand that you are relatively new to the ranger class, and trying to learn the ropes, but please defer to us when we tell you what's needed for being a good ranger... because we've been doing it long enough to know. I "think" the point you're missing is the part were you would stand in the "sweet spot" behind a mob where you can do both ranged AND melee attacks. From this location, you would ideally run through all ranged attacks (being sure to let the ranged AA fire on schedule), and then fill any time remaining (before ranged CA's recharge) with melee CA's, but ONLY so that you aren't standing around doing nothing. Melee CAs are a time filler. When I cast a melee CA, the game automatically turns on melee autoattack, and I IMMEDIATELY turn ranged AA back on. Many rangers will macro it to their melee CA's, but I prefer manually controlling it. Never in the course of combat should you be standing so close that ranged attacks won't work. Even if you were, it would be worth your time to move away to fire off a ranged auto attack. My ranged AA has been topping out at around 10k hits (I still don't have my mythical), which far surpasses anything a melee weapon would provide. So quite simply, a melee autoattack lowers DPS. Edit: Fixed an instance of saying ranged instead of melee. I mistyped.
StaticLex wrote: please stop posting your nonsense. You are misleading every ranger here. You are proving that you know nothing about the mechanics of a ranger. Any fight you are in, you should be finding the sweet spot immediately and staying there. Your melee CAs will have ranged auto-attack macro'd into them so after you are done firing off a melee CA, your ranged auto-attack goes back on immediately. This cost no time at all. I realize you are new to the class, but coming here and posting nonsense about the class and acting like you know it all does you no good. Please learn to listen and learn. Oh and btw, our epic has a 0 meter auto range, so even when you are stacked you should still be hitting with ranged auto. But, if you knew anything about ranger mechanics you would know this and you obviously don't.
StaticLex wrote: Granted, stacking is the one situation where all rules are out the window. So, in the name of compromise, how about keeping a few daggers in the bag for when something like that comes up. Also, we are ignoring the fact that most weapons with good ranger stats also tend to be good melee fighting weapons (shields excluded).
StaticLex wrote: Alright alright. Please tell me you are not that clueless? You honestly think melee attacks are better than our auto-attack? I suggest going here: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/posting Lots of good advice there. We don't need another little Billy.
