Howdy fellow Rangers !! :smileywink: The Ranger Subclass . . . . what can you say, you want a challenge in a online game, you picked the right class. But I am here to let you know that you choose well. Although you are considered a ranger at level 20, you dont find your true calling til your late 20's, beginning into your 30's. Like most posts I have read, low to mid 20 lvling is tough, you have to stick w/ green and blue solos, and occasionally if you land your specials, a white is doable. But I found myself running more often than not when trying to solo anything worth a challenge in TS. But now to the positives of the Ranger skill. I am now a lvl 31 Ranger, and am soloing lvl 34 snappers and bears on EL, with no problem. The real value of a ranger is to get out in the open fields and use your skills to their fullest. I finished the EL access quest at lvl 29, and found a routine that I use on EL, that might help. Alot of this, you probably heard, but Im just here to enlighten the rangers questioning their potential.
Howdy fellow Rangers !! :smileywink: The Ranger Subclass . . . . what can you say, you want a challenge in a online game, you picked the right class. But I am here to let you know that you choose well. Although you are considered a ranger at level 20, you dont find your true calling til your late 20's, beginning into your 30's. Like most posts I have read, low to mid 20 lvling is tough, you have to stick w/ green and blue solos, and occasionally if you land your specials, a white is doable. But I found myself running more often than not when trying to solo anything worth a challenge in TS. But now to the positives of the Ranger skill. I am now a lvl 31 Ranger, and am soloing lvl 34 snappers and bears on EL, with no problem. The real value of a ranger is to get out in the open fields and use your skills to their fullest. I finished the EL access quest at lvl 29, and found a routine that I use on EL, that might help. Alot of this, you probably heard, but Im just here to enlighten the rangers questioning their potential.
Howdy fellow Rangers !! :smileywink: Sorry bout the duplicates above The Ranger Subclass . . . . what can you say, you want a challenge in a online game, you picked the right class. But I am here to let you know that you choose well. Although you are considered a ranger at level 20, you dont find your true calling til your late 20's, beginning into your 30's. Like most posts I have read, low to mid 20 lvling is tough, you have to stick w/ green and blue solos, and occasionally if you land your specials, a white is doable. But I found myself running more often than not when trying to solo anything worth a challenge in TS. But now to the positives of the Ranger skill. I am now a lvl 31 Ranger, and am soloing lvl 34 snappers and bears on EL, with no problem. The real value of a ranger is to get out in the open fields and use your skills to their fullest. I finished the EL access quest at lvl 29, and found a routine that I use on EL, that might help. Alot of this, you probably heard, but Im just here to enlighten the rangers questioning their potential. - First, explore your surroundings, identify escape routes, and kiting lanes for potential targets (Don't wanna back pedal into a mess of adds, you'll be using evac very quickly.) - Second, spend that money on your armor and protects, I am still using my quest armor, and keep my jewelry updated for max protection. - Third, arrows and poisons - I keep several stacks of feyiron for potential baddies, that I might encounter, but for the most part, I still use my makeshift carbonite arrows. Stock up on poison, I usually equip and use 2 different types of poison to get a dbl effect (usually depends on update, sometimes they stack well, other times, well you know ). Now it's time to hit and run . . . (again this is my personal method, Im sure there's tons of different routines, but take what you can to help improve your personal talents) First, I pick my target, and have my kite route behind me . . . - Cast Steady Aim, and Natural Instincts to increase ranged skills - Sniping Shot or Back Shot (or if you picked the adv version of this) - Wounding Arrow (lower target defenses) - Impede, then Corner - This is optional attack, sometimes Ill throw in a Lightning strike or Pierce attack Start back peddling into kite mode - Flaming Shot (or Open Shot) - Triple Shot (if it lands 3 consecutive times, check out the amount of damage you did after the fight, with good poison it's impressive). Time to prepare for some Melee Action ( To fully utilize all your assets, you will continuous jump in and out of ranged and melee) - Forester's Insight - Survival Instinct (Gotta get ready to be a tank, :smileytongue Now I cast an HO, you wanna hit hard and fast, so this takes a little practice but does some lethal damage - Lucky Break - Cheap Shot (this stuns the target, allowing you to get behind him, to launch your lethal Shadow Lunge attack) while this is charging make sure to stop attacking - Shadow (Stalk if necessary) - Shadow Lunge (I have this spell at app 3, and at lvl 30 I am currently ranked 199 (at 450+) and climbing in melee damage hit on Everfrost server) - Lunging Thrust - Lightning Strike - Leaping Cut (or Bleed) By now, you should have some DoT on him, and your ranged archery specials should be recharged. Go back into kiting mode using Flaming Shot and Triple Shot. The rest of the battle will depend on your health and power, and your targets health and power. If you can afford some more melee jump in there and slash and hack, if not, switch to archery and use ranged while keeping in your kite path (Occasionally firing off Flaming and/or Triple when recharged). *Keep yourself buffed and keep target debuffed. This is my routine. It has some variances to it, and I change it occasionally for fun, but the basics is still there. A Ranger is a master of the outdoors and I hope this will help. I enjoy my ranger, and of course, I dont use this routine in a group, but if you wanna solo and have a challenge, a method like this might improve your success rate. Good Luck and Keep Those Arrows Flying. (If you aint shooting, you ain't living) Raezo :smileywink: Message Edited by Raezo on 02-25-2005 05:11 PM
Well its obvious the Ranger in EQ had some flaws. He was just a hybrid with a lack of good bow skills. I have not yet had the chance to try out a Ranger in EQ2 for myself. I have grouped with some. The Ranger seems to have nice DPS and with the right placement, can be very vauleable to the healers. I know any of the scout classes if you play smart can pull aggro off the healer long enough for the tanks to grab it. I play a rogue right now and I keep my main tank targetted so I keep attacking what he attacks. Battles go smoothly this way. If the healer gets aggro and the tank is not moving quickly to help he/she out, then I run over flank/backstab and unleash my moves to grab aggro, and even as a wood I can keep the aggro for a few momments due to high evasion. When the tank sees I have aggro, he usually comes over grabs it from me, I hit Evade(deagrro) and the battle resumes as usual. Battles go very smoothly this way. For a Ranger, I could see similiar. Light things up with a bow, don't over do the abilities and you should keep aggro away. Keep an eye out for the healer and by sure to keep the main tank as your target, and he will be sure to keep the aggro. A Ranger should be able to stand right beside the casters and be a lookout for them. If you feel the mob your a fighting are just taking little damage from your arrows, then just run up and straight melee. Don't waste arrows when you don't have to. Now like I said I have not played a Predator/Ranger, but I think they would be very useful and have many uses by any group. Whenever Verizon gets off their lazy **** and bring my replacement modem I will make a scout and get him to ranger to try this out for myself.
Notice how all the positive response, or most of it, come from low to mid level people? Some people will prolly never participate in the high end game, incuding epic raids. Some dont care for it, and some never get the chance. If you fall under that category, ranger is ok. As I have stated several places now, ranger at high end game, simply sucks. So go with ranger if you dont plan to go High end/Epic mobs and raid stuff. Its a good class with alot of potential. Just prepare for a real dissapointment once you hit the 40s - the higher you get, the more you realize you suck. You simply cant cope with the dps demand most groups ask for.
There may be some of us that don't measure the worth of our characters according to the demands of "most groups." We all know that rangers are an uphill battle, and that hill gets steeper the further you go. Hence this thread, to help encourage each other and share success stories. Thanks for the attempted 'reality check,' but keep your gloomy forecasts to any of the hundreds of griping threads that populate these forums.
Level 43 Ranger; Here is my positive comment for this thread.... Ranger ROCK at level 30-32 (triple, sniping, great skill advances make huge dps gains).
Here's a positive post... looking at the Ranger class, I can deduce that we only one way to go and that's up. We can only get better then what we are. So thus, we should exclusively avoid any nerf bat swinging. I thoroughly enjoyed my Ranger up till about lvl 31. Since then, the one thing that made me stand out (DPS) has been sorely lacking compared to other classes that are not necessarily defined as a DPS class. *sigh* -Naissur, Neriak
Oh, my aching back. As good a time to stop and chat resurrect this thread as any, I say. So! Done any cool things with your ranger lately? Still enjoying playing her / him despite all the adversity? I've been meaning to post an update here for a while; I was in a ranger slump in the mid-late 20s, but started having a lot more fun in recent weeks. Some of it was ranger-specific, some of it had to do with broadening my focus when it came to playing EQ2. Some cool ranger-specific stuff included: - Heading over to Nek and the Commonlands, and then sneaking into Freeport. (SO fun!) I helped a friend with the betrayal (by escorting him thru the Serpent Sewers) and then headed up into N. Freeport to meet the NPC that gives you Fallen Gate access. Completed that access quest in no time and went into FG with another friend's evil char. I was after the Zombie lore book, he needed another quest, so I spent an evening there. I really liked FG, very cool-looking dark elf ambiance. Really like Nek and CL too, it was amazing what a change of scenery can do for you when everything in Antonica or TS starts to get boring or repetitive. - Finishing the Stormfire quests. I spent most of a weekend on this (I'd only done the very first of Valinayle's quests at that point) and it was utterly grueling. Killed over 100 grays in SH (20 each of defiled squires, sentries, priests, knights, lancers, and keepers), which isn't bad except most of those only spawn in two places and only at a rate of about 2-4 at a time (if you're lucky). So it was a lot of tedious camping. I won't even get into the Gydak experience, but I guess we got lucky in that he popped after 4-5 hours of camping. At long last, Stormfire - my first true love. All in all, it wasn't THAT bad in retrospect, just time-consuming. And the bow is awesome. - Opening up Zek and Enchanted Lands. Very cool, lots of fun. Zek boat ride was tough on first two attempts, but EL was sucessful on first try. (Solely b/c of the groups; EL isn't any harder than Zek.) Haven't spent a ton of time in Zek yet, but the first few trips to EL were very lucrative. On our first night out there, we got some awesome drops, and I completed my first quest there. (Drodo the halfer on the docks gives you a simple quest that nets over 1gp AND a sweet belt in reward.) Good XP, great loot so far. All in all, I've been having a lot of fun with Kaeros. Been spending a bit more time provisioning too, nice to have good food on-hand and it brings in a bit of extra cash. I've also spent some time on a couple new alts, just to break up the routine. I've found that I have the most fun playing when I'm mixing things up, going different places and doing different things (sometimes with different characters) to avoid getting bogged down with that 'grind' feeling. I know we rangers still have a lot of problems - the new stealth skill bug isn't much fun - but for now, I'm having a blast. (No hurry to get to 45+ tho...I'll take my time in hopes they fix us there.) Good luck and have fun
Concur. Still having a blast. EL and Zek have opened up a lot of doors. At 32 have had no trouble finding groups. Kwent
38 atm kinda odd how my sniping shot is doing more damage then hagers lunge atm -_- serius went from 690+ to 400 :**( sniping shot is dealing 500 to 600 :/ anyways still disshing out massive damage with Bloodlet Bow (stormfire old news)
I'm lvl 46, loving it still and got lucky as hell: guildie snagged a ''Debilitating Arrow'' master1 and someone auctioned off ''Culling the Herd'' master1 in the zone I was in. Especially with the new arrow damages, Culling the Herd does massive hits. That with my adept iii crippling strike gives me two large-hit, minute-long recast combat arts. 1.25p for each master book, why not. Problem now is I got no cash left, hehe. Oh and i bought a ruby for 1.5p(good/bad price?) and i guess I'll save it for something like Storm of Arrows or something. So yeah, very excited still and yearning to hit lvl 50. Have yet to fully explore many areas too, and I love sneaking through places just to see the sights. Went into Permafrost once and got freaked by the huge boss-man, Lavastorm is death waiting to happen. Out of curiosity I stepped onto lava, to see what it would do, and yes, it pretty much kills you on the spot. Guess I need better heat resists, hah!
ROFL, yeah a heat resist of about 14,000 might come in handy for the lava.... Thanks for posting, glad to hear that post-45 isn't completely downhill. I'm hoping the changes to arrow damage improves the lot of the end-gamers, god knows they've been suffering for long enough. Oh, one other thing that was cool: my good friend Quiggly (a fellow ranger) and I hooked up a deal where I make him food and he makes me poison. He whipped up some Translucent Irrepressible Vexation and I love this stuff. My Triple Shot hits for ridiculous damage now since the poison damage is almost all up-front and no DoT. I think its ~150 damage + 26 damage + 22 every 6 seconds. Anyway, it's awesome - this poison and the new arrow damage make a HUGE difference! (Stormfire doesn't hurt either. )
Yeah it's all in how you play. I haven't gotten into raiding yet so I can't vouch for the ranger in that respect. My main play style is in a duo team with a paladin who's always 1-4 levels above me(he's 47 now, i managed to finally catch up, hehe). We scour the land looking for challenges, doing quests and taking on harder and harder things to gauge our effectiveness against certain level enemies. When we hit the max level dude we can take on, they make for exciting battles, especially if it's a named enemy. Some of the best battles are those close calls or the ones that require the most thought, best power conservation, aggro hold, damage given etc. Heck, I even really enjoyed a battle we lost but got close. When he levels up(as he's bound to do ahead of me), we look for the next range of enemies we can take on with relative safety and explore new areas. Every now and then, a healer-type joins the fray and then as a trio, the level of enemies we can take on shoots up and it gets more exciting. editaragraph spacing Message Edited by Miligne on 03-27-2005 03:31 AM
I love to play mine. He hits way harder than my main paladin i play. My paladin is a 31 and my ranger is 22, my ranger has way more damage and is fun as hell to play.
Got a nice compliment while duo'ing turtles on EL beach yesterday. I needed them for a Far Seas writ, and came upon a L29 bruiser soloing them. (I'm also 29.) I waited til he was done and asked if he wanted to duo, he says sure, why not. After some aggro readjustment (he needed to taunt and keep taunting, I needed to calm my itchy trigger finger), we were really moving. "These things go down really fast with you around," he says. I was so proud! He wasn't kidding, either. When I worked up to the Triple Combo of Doom (Back Shot, Wounding Shot, and Triple Shot), even the L35 turtles fell within seconds. (Thank you, Quiggly, for the Irrepressible Vexation, that stuff is EVIL!) We wrapped up after about 45 minutes, he says "I really didn't know rangers could do that kind of damage, thanks a lot for the help." Hehe, we're the ultra-secret uber-class, and word is starting to spread...
It would be very, very, very, very cool if someone at L50 went back and made a list of ALL the skills that are broken, posted them in an easy to read format, and we all kept the thread alive. That's how other forums are getting DEV responses. Retribution - Befallen
Some have tried.... http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=spellart&message.id=36393 Message Edited by DevlDeggs on 03-28-2005 07:38 PM
