I've read stickies etc, unfortunately most of the info seems to be from 2008 or earlier so now I'm totally lost. Long Version: I love my ranger from a character perspective, except his survivability and dps really stink. My wife's guardian does more dps. I find my snares just don't work (slow... my @*@*@) thorn trap the mobs just run around. Solo Melee I nearly die almost any mob, even some greys (wahhh). I tried doing the Ranger tree arrow dps goodness, it helped my group dps, but my solo survivability suffered majorly. So tried a mix of Strength tree and Stamina tree, that helped melee and survivability a tad but not significantly. I tried "gemming" for pure agility and crit %- but that didn't seem to make any difference in either dps or survivability. Every guide I've seen, wiki, etc, all seem to have conflicting info on classes, or no info at all I hate asking for help, but.... help??? TLDR: Help paper tiger Ranger fight moar better.
Snaring shot. Fettering Poison Ensnare Immobilizing Lunge These are all critical when soloing. This is because a soloing ranger needs to kite their mobs around. You snare the hell out of them, run and shoot away. When soloing you are not to melee. that is unless you are really low level. Knowing your level would help tremendously in giving advice as well.
Defensive Stance and a Round Shield helped my ranger from levels 60-85 before I was able to outright just snare shot and kill them before they got to me. Also to add to what Neiloch said, Stupefying Poison stacks with other poisons (its got a yellow border in the buff bar, while the others have red). I usually run with Vitality Breach and Stupefying Poison or Mentality Breach in groups (later you never really worry about power in groups).
I'd use fettering poison over stupefying, once a mob is snared, it should never hit you and fettering doesn't break in combat, the only way you lose fettering poison generally is if it runs the full duration before it procs again.
Cool thanks all for the tips, I'll have to see if Stupifying poison or fettering exists on our auction house In answer to questions: I'm just fresh 83. I've found the 70+ grind to be particularly painful. I usually run with a Guardian since I find it nearly impossible to solo anything. I seem to only have 2 "snare" effects both reducing movement by like 50% but breaking on damage, and since I can't shoot while moving it's kinda hard to kite (kiting a lead balloon?) hehe I tested out the thorns trap, and actually managed to get one mob snared! Unfortunately I backed up and butt-pulled another mob who killed me heheh. I bought a nice shield to try out too, and that seems to have helped survivability a tad, of course at the loss of some dps but that's workable. I really just want to get a single character to max level so I can start getting the xp bonus hahah. Jesh, 5 year vet and still no max level characters! We joke that by the time I get to max they'll raise the cap again. Thanks for the advice(s) all! It is helpful!
Also keep in mind that if an enemy gets to you at 20-30% life, you should be able to finish it off in melee without too much trouble. Cheap shot -> Sneak Attack (+stealth) -> Emberstrike or Ranger's Blade should do a good chunk of damage. Or, as mentioned above, don't hesitate to use Immobilizing Lunge and then back off enough to use your bow to finish the mob off. One last note, if it's not something you've done before, but learn to time your CAs with your auto-attack. That alone will up your dps significantly. And, as you're 80+, hit SF zones asap to start gearing yourself up. Life changes for all dps classes significantly when your crit % and double attack % starting firing on a near-permanent basis.
Unless your wife’s Guardian has better equipment and better quality CAs than you there is no reason that her Guardian should be doing more DPS than you. I noticed from looking at your character on eq2players that you are level 83 but are using NO level 80+ equipment. Have you done any of the quests in Sundered Frontier? Did you do the quests in Kunark and Ykesha? If not you should go to EQ2Wiki and check out these solo quest lines. This has the benefit of giving you decent equipment while helping you to level faster than grinding levels by just killing mobs. After all there is a reason that they call this game EverQUEST. Your snares (and all of your other CAs) will only work as well as the quality of them. You have three CAs that will snare the mob: Rear Shot, Snaring Shot and Ensnare. The first two are ranged CAs that do a fair amount of damage in addition to snaring the mob. The third one debuffs the mob in addition to snaring him so it is not as important while soloing, although it can help. At your level you should be using Rear Shot VII (7) and Snaring Shot IV (4) and Ensnare VI (6). Because the first two are so important to being able to solo, you should be using the best version of these that you can afford, Expert (player made) if at all possible. Look for them on the broker or ask your friendly neighborhood jeweler if they can hook you up. The most important Predator Alternate Achievement (AA) tree line is the second (agility) line. At a minimum you should put 23 points into this line split 8-4-10-1. You should then put 23 points into the first (strength) line split 4-8-10-1. All of these abilities will help you DPS more and/or solo easier. In the Ranger AA tree the most important line is the Multi-Shot line. Put 5 points into each of the 5 multi-shot abilities and then 1 point into double shot. Also be sure to put 5 points into Snaring shot. This will let you use this critical soloing CA every 5 seconds. In addition to having sub-average gear and possibly sub-average CAs you also have a sub-average number of AA points. By the time you get to level 83 you should have close to 200 AAs. It looks like you have about 110. This will affect your ability to kill mobs both solo and in a group. This is another reason to do quests. Each one completed will give you some more dedicated AA experience, in addition to level experience (and the equipment upgrades you need). In addition to improving your character from a game mechanics point of view (better equipment, CAs and AAs) you need to be using all of your Ranger’s abilities in the most effective way. I have found that the following is a very effective way to kill a mob solo. First I find an area that is fairly open. Somewhere that I can stand at or near my maximum Bow range from one mob where there are no other mobs near me or between my target and me. Second I prep for the battle; I make sure all of my combat buff CAs are up. Then I stealth and fire off either Sniper Shot (if it is up) or Hidden Shot. I then fire off Snaring Shot just as soon as the mob gets in range of it. Then I run through as many ranged CAs as I can until the mob gets to me, usually 2-3. Then I use one of the 3 stuns we have (PBS, Cheap Shot, Hilt Strike) run through the mob and use Sneak Attack followed by Ranger’s Blade (if it is up) or Ember Strike. At this point the mob is usually dead. If not, I use another stun and back up one step and use one of my Ranged CAs. After using up all of my stuns I use Immobilizing Lunge (our root CA) and run to an open area as far from the mob as I can get, near max range if I can. I then start with snaring shot and repeat the whole process. The trick is to use as many CAs as possible to hit the mob while keeping him away from you. We cannot take as much damage as a Guardian, however we should be able to deal out a lot more damage than a Guardian a lot quicker than he can so that we can kill the mob before he can kill us. One of the things I like to say about a ranger is that there are no long fights. Someone will be dead in 30 seconds. Hopefully it is the mob. Hope this helps,
One more thing, you really need to get a decent Bow. Start by getting Slythe's Bow of Flimflam by doing the Quest called Hold on to the Phylactery. Then do the Ranger Epic Quest in order to get Eagle's Talon. Look on EQ2Wiki for a walk through of both of these quests. Every level 80+ Ranger should be using the Eagle's Talon bow, or one of the 20 or so that are better (but almost all of them require a raid). You will need a group, or at least a tank and healer to complete these quests, but from what you said you have the tank, so this should be very doable for you. Good Luck,
Cool and thanks! Just spent every last plat I had on new gear. Hopefully that will help a bit. Raids, not gonna happen, best we can ever do is maybe some quick dungeons. Will definitely check out the bows you mentioned. Here's hoping
Quick followup - Eagles Talon has no agility according to the wiki - am I too fixated on stats (agility) over other important factors? I see the bow has some lovely proc abilities. A couple of my low level items I haven't replaced due to them having crazy agility (like level 62 gear having +40 agility, while the level 80 gear only has +20 agility), should I instead look at other aspects and not worry about having less agility?
Mroarka@Kithicor wrote: Not sure what wiki you are looking at but Eagles Talon has 40 agility. See: http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Eagle's_Talon_(Fabled) However the reason you want to be using eagles talon is not for the agility, it is because it will do more damage than any other bow that you are likely to be able to get. It would be the best bow for you if it had zero agility. As for agility, the boots you have look like they have an agility of 35. While this is nice the mastercrafted level 82 equivalent have an agility of 38. They also have a Multi-attack and a Crit chance of 6.2%. This is far more important than a few points of agility. The bottom line is that you want to be wearing level appropriate gear. I would not go out and spend 100 plat on new gear. I would go out and run through the solo quest line in SF and put on the stuff that the quests give you and try it out. Keep the old gear just in case, but I think you will find that just about any treasured quest reward level 80+ chainmail boot is going to be better than the level 62 piece you have. Hope this helps,
Thanks again! Some reason the character sheet showing on everquest2 is VERY outdated. I'm pretty much none of that gear now. I did find a bow pretty close to the one you linked too, I forget the name but it's a long bow rating around 111, slow firing but heavy hitting. Definitely MUCH better after I bought up to 80-83 gear on most slots. Noticably much better. Even my snares started working. So pretty much I was having a gear problem I haven't run dps stats to actually measure, but it was noticable enough that I mostly didn't have to pause going through green mobs, and could bring a lot of mobs down to 50% or lower before they got to me. I was even able to dual wield without problems in melee though I did take a bit more damage (understandable). The bow, thanks for linking! Here's the one I was talking about by the same name (mythical vs fabled) hehe: http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Eagle%27s..._%28Mythical%29 Weird. Quests I've been mostly cleaning out quest log which got massively full. Spent an hour or so last night playing, and running quests in the Moors of Ykesha knocking a few green quests out, flying back and forth back and forth in the barrel. That was a bit tedious after 50 or so times heh. My first forray into city of paineel or whatever, dang that city is a PAIN to get around LOL. Now I'll have to go back since I have better gear and see what I can manage, but ugg I dread going into that city. So ya thanks everyone for tips!
The problem with a lot of the information on eq2 wiki, especially gear info, is that they changed a lot of the stats on items with the latest expansion pack. Strength used to be the main stat for determining how much damage a ranger did, now it is agility. When they changed the stats on the items in the game very few people went back and changed the stats on the items in eq2 wiki. The Mythical Eagles Talon now has 64 agility, the stats you see on eq2 wiki are the old ones before they changed it. The bow you bought is an excellent one. Player made Mastercrafted bows (and gear) have always been some of the best that you can buy. I just happen to prefer questing for my gear. But to each his own. Glad the new gear is working. Actually I find Paineel a lot easier to get around in than say Gorawin (or whatever the city in TD is called). That place is a maze. Paineel at least has a single major path that all of the rooms branch off of. There are two elevators that lead out to the surface but those make sence after a short while. Glad to hear things are working better. Let me know if you have any more questions. Good luck and good hunting,
Mroarka@Kithicor wrote: Just a quick FYI, but I've found that the margin between the solo player vs. heroic/group player vs. raid-geared players is narrower now than it ever has been in the past. Just getting one full group of friends (or even strangers) and running some heroic instances (such as Erudin Library and Vasty Deep : Conservatory) once a day will gear you out very, very well. Throw in some harder instances once you all get good mitigation and better gear, possibly some T2+ mark of manaar gear as well, and you'll be in very good shape. Trust me.
If you want some cheap but good level 80 gear. The Moonshadow Armor will do it for ya until you get level 90 equivelents. This armor takes Incaradine Clusters (T8 rare ore). You'll just need to find someone with the pattern to make them. Incaradine was going for cheap on my server (2pp a piece) so I was able to get a full set made on my ranger for under 20pp (14pp for the ore, 5pp tip). Eagle Talon is a must. When you're 85, the Epic Reprecusions quest is a must as well. Right now I managed to pick up a level 90 Legendary Chest to replace the one from the Necromatic Box quest in Sundered Frontier. And all my jewelry is 90 Legendary from the 90 dungeons. Still have Moonshadow Boots, Legs, Shoulders, and Helm, and Gloves though. Have almost every spell experted and can pull about 12k DPS on a named fight. Not terribly great but not terribly bad either. The downside is once you get to where I am at, many tanks have agro issues unless they outgear the content you're running
Another good way to gear up is to run some of th TSO instances at 90. There are quite a few armor drops there as well that are a step up from 80s shard armor or 82 mastercrafter armor. The jewlery isn't great but there is a nice belt that drops in anethema with haste. Some of the very easy ones are: Scion, First 3 names in Anethema, First name in Najena's Hollow Tower is trivial (not sure about the rest, I don't really like the zone so I stop there) and Deep Forge. The armor drops are NOT as good as the SF instances but they are very easy to farm especially if you have 4 or 5 people looking to gear up. Good chance of a several drops for that can be used.
also as much as it pains me that it's true, BG's are a good source of some nice equipment. Could just lose BG match's all day and still get tokens towards some really nice gear.
Danean@Guk wrote: This info right here should be stickied - very useful for those new to the Ranger class!
Mroarka@Kithicor wrote: See you are having an easier time already as a ranger! With the risk of giving redundant information, the damage bows do is tied to the tier arrows you are using. The lower the level of the arrows is in relation to the bow, the less damage it will do. Your profile on everquest2 (which might be very outdated on that point ) shows you using what seem to be T4 arrows. Titanium arrows would yield much better results.
