Just wondering if there are any higher level dirges that have built up thier range skills , use a good bow, and good ammo. Wondering if our ranged weapon skills are worth anything at higher levels, I am a seasoned bard, but not yet a dirge, it seems to work well at this level but just trying see if this is gona be worth focusing on?
Dirge's only get one archery skill which gets upgraded, so they aren't going to push out a whole lot of damage. I used archery a bit for pulling, but now that lanet's is unnerfed I lead off with it then hit cacophony so don't have time for the archery pull.
Archery is good for when you are getting tired of positioning yourself for every pull and you just want to sit back with the lazy casters and push buttons. Turn on ranged attack and play nuker for a bit, can break the tedium in an xp grind group, although you take a huge hit to your dps.
If you have a longbow, you'll notice the range is 37 meters. This ends up being longer than the reach of Lanet's (which I myself also use for pulling often), but the extra reach of a longbow can come in handy for certain pulls. For example, if a mob is roaming away, he could walk out of range in the time it takes to cast Lanet's (yes you can move while casting, but if there are other hostiles in the way you may not want to), whereas just turning on ranged attack to fire off 1 shot is instant and has a little more reach, so you can catch it in time. Good for snagging a certain mob when there is too much junk in the way or you're just feeling too lazy to get closer. Obviously though, you don't need ranged skill up to pull, since a miss will still lock the mob. It may still be a good idea to get the skill up if you plan on using something like Thuri's Sapping Shot to drain a tiny bit of power from the target to yourself, and I suppose if fear kiting is your thing, a bow is better than trying to stay in melee range (harder to do in eq2 than it was in eq1 even, and with the way mobs can still throw attacks while feared in eq2 it might not be a good idea to stay that close). There are also some mobs in the game that are immune to certain types of melee (the implementation still seems buggy though...) so you may end up running into a mob that you can't use slash or pierce against, in which case you may be able to use a bow with the crafted arrows that do crushing damage. Not likely you will run into this though until 40s or level 50ish. If you do plan on getting your ranged skill up, throwing daggers with a bandolier (think that's what it was) is probably better than using a bow, because of the shorter delay. Since you can get skills up on grays, you can either kite mobs around and throw daggers at it, or what I ended up finding out I could do is fight a giant and then slowly step back far enough that I was able to use range attack, but I was still in the giant's melee range so he wouldn't try to get closer. Then just stood there with range attack turned on and reloaded stacks of daggers as they ran out. It did, however, take 2000 daggers to gain about 100 skill points...not expensive if you make sure you are using the cheap ones, but does take a little while.
Oh also, about the huge hit to damage if you stand back in an XP group and use ranged skills / nukes... if you are using arrows appropriate for your level, and a decent bow, your main loss of damage will be from the fact that you are out of range to use your normal combat arts, but it is possible that your bow will be doing more damage than your standard melee. It's more expensive for sure, and if you use the cheap arrows then ya you are going to do pretty weak damage. For example though at 42 using fulginate or indium arrows (I wish I knew the difference, they both seem to do the same, cost the same, so if anyone knows...) using Stormfire bow, I can land hits for around 350, higher with Sureshot Bow. You are correct in that your overall damage will likely be less because you aren't using any of your combat arts aside from the ranged one, but a bow may outdamage your normal melee.
I might be wrong about this but I thought that hitting a mob with a melee attack while its feared would break the fear. Seems like if I don't turn melee attack off before I fear a mob (assuming I'm in melee range) then the fear will break immediately, so I've been turning it off before every fear. I think I read somewhere that ranged attacks and song damage don't break fear, but I haven't experimented much with this since I usually switch back to the other mob. Anyone have any info on this?
I have been able to directly melee a mob while it is feared without fear breaking, many times (I haven't found anything that reliably breaks fear, other than its own tendency to break far short of its maximum duration). However, even in zones that aren't lagging, it seems very difficult to position yourself to be able to hit the mob; even though it looks like you are standing in the correct place, you get spammed with "Target is too far away" or "You cannot see your target." Anyway, fear kiting really isn't as viable as it was in eq1.
Well, a fighter class can use a bow too, but frankly apart from pulling it is mainly fluffy filler. Basically, the only reason I even have a bow is for the stats. $
Thanks for the insight, I have kina noticed that our ranged specual abilities, or at least singing shot, isn't worth the damage to waste the arrows I can use, I tend to do more per shot w/o then with that I have noticed. Maybe the higher 1s will be worth it, but I still cant complain about averaging 50 pts of damage per arrow at level 18. Message Edited by Demothises on 01-19-2005 03:01 AM
Definately get a nice bow and work on your Ranged Skills. Do not neglect them. At 32 and lower I typically hit for 300 in my opening Sapping Shot, and can go over 500 with procs. Get a StormFire Bow from Sir Valineye Quest in SH. My Bow does amazing damage, and has longer range than Lanets. Better to open with my Bow then pop a Lanets on the way in than to pull wiht Lanets alone. I am very happy I took the time to raise up my bow skills. SCANDIA
I keep my ranged skills maxxed and I reap the benefits I'd like to think. I use the finest quality crafted longbow I can get my hands on, and currently carbonite arrows. I don't remember the skill name, but the two shot routinely procs Crypt's Quiet for a nice 300 points of total damage (roughly 90-120 from each arrow hit, and around 87 from CQ) before the mob knows what hit them. It's my favorite way to pull.
Well I don't have much right to post because I'm not even a Dirge but so far as a Bard I use bow a good bit and plan to carry that on unless the damage from shot skill makes it bad to use. But, so far I've been happy with bow for pulling back and letting out a few shots (Singing Shot + Ranged Attack then run back in which usually nets me about 120dmg in a few seconds) I'm also curious about what Dirges get in terms of ranged combat but even if a bow is used occasionally they can add great stats.
