so much for really fixing rangers (live broadcast disapointment :( )

From what was said from most the dev team that answered ranger questions on live broadcast for the sf release they all pretty much hate them, so w/e on that dont be expecting much for ranger.

duddwin wrote:

I think it is maybe sarcastic meaning they dont like them as they cause to much controversy and problems, but i have not attended that live broadcast.

They gave a pretty big hint that they thought they where over powered and didnt want to discuss them. I agree rangers are good at pvp but we arnt asking for pvp skillz, we need raid skillz. idk how they dont get it but w/e lol.
All we can do is hope i guess, or hope they where bustin our balls.

only 2 people said anything about rangers, rothgar said he had one that he played on unrest, Brenlo said that he didn't like them, but as was said, is probably because they are hard to balance/cause controversy

At this point I would not like Rangers as a developer either. What a mess! I would hate to be the one to try and get it cleaned up. Going to be a long wait not sure how many of us are up for it. I hope a lot of you are.

Well, sadly that may be a case, they should give the AA to where we are melee focused with some damage ranged, or ranged focus, with some survival melee ...

Right now it is a cluster as they do not know what they want to do ... in EQ 1 it was always melee first range second (except for a short period of time), in Vanguard you can spec to do either you want ... I like that method ... as i like melee but utilize the bow to bring a mob down before it gets to me ...

Actually on EQ1 rangers get a lot of ranged skills 80-85, way more than melee stuff for sure aside from other EQ1 ranger stuff like buffs and nukes/dots.

Vanguard rangers are the best rangers I have played in a MMO period. Early on they let you pick if you want to be a melee ranger or ranged based one, make its respective stance much better for you. Rangers are beastly on VG and their balance factor is basically how wizards/warlocks work which is they could easily pull aggro with DPS if they aren't careful, so they have HUGE DPS potential but at the same time can't unload at all times without getting swatted. And bow rangers on VG can just go pure Bow all the way, do max DPS and never touch a melee attack. So great.
I'd ditch EQ2 for VG in a second if VG was getting active development like huge GU's or xpacs. EQ2 needs to just blatantly copy VG rangers in certain aspects like DPS methods and output. I don't think rangers on EQ2 are ready for heals, cures, and group buffs though lol.
Also when you decide to go full bow ranger on VG, they give you ranged equivilents of your best melee skills *HINT HINT*

Ok, I know Rothgar has played a ranger before. But what exactly did Brenlo say. Not with commentary on what he meant but what did he say and what context was it in?

hm, not sure if i remember the exact wording but ill do my best.
Some one asked if he was going to fix rangers and he said "dont even get me started on that" and the other dev said "yeah he doesnt like rangers very much haha" and he said "anyways moving on" or something like that anyways gave a huge impression that he is sick of rangers, and thinks they dont need anything changed. Something you had to hear with tone and all to get the full picture of it. That may of just been my impression and it could of been wrong but thats how i took it and it was never brought up again after that pretty much, while on the other hand summoners where explained. Summoners being the other classes that needed to be fixed where explained that they are working on it yet rangers got the brick wall on the broadcast.

I stopped Playing EQ1 during the Dragons of Norrath Expansion, so i did not know they increased Bow Productivity. When the Bow was king when i played was when we were raiding elemental.

And Vanguard Rangers are Beasty ... if it was not cleary circling the path of death i would be playing that game over this one ... My Ranger was not set up to do the best melee or ranged but a happy middle for the content he was in ...

I still play my ranger on EQ1 and I almost never melee unless close quarters or safety require it, or maybe if the group needs the slow that procs off the epic weapons. There is Endless Quiver, a slew of ranged based AAs, and the totally awesome Harmonious Arrow, which allows you to pull a single MOB from a social group. I don't know any EQ1 rangers who melee as a first choice, but to be fair, my ranger is 85 and is playing at the end game. Still, with the AA choices, and some true utility (everyone always wants ranger buffs), rangers in EQ1 are far better balanced and desirable.

Amazing the Diffference time makes, when i was playing we had to pull using harmony spells to basically sedate the mobs (outdoor only), then pull, snare call to camp, jolt once mob got to camp and hope to get it on the tank or man up and tank yourself.
But that was when the max level was 70 and such. Oh i maxxed out all my Ranged AAs and Melee AAs at the time and used /autoshot command but for the most part my melee far out dpsed my ranged weapon bow.

Neiloch@Crushbone wrote:

You know, it's funny, I've heard that a lot about Vanguard. Shame the game got such a horrible start, and so little attention/love from SoE these days. It really could have been something. A number of ex-EQ1 friends I know who have tried it referred to Vanguard as the "spiritual embodiment of EQ" in a different world, but was sadly an unplayable game for much of it's life.
Vanguard's combat, classes, and devs + EQ2's setting, graphics, and budget would have been a beautiful match.

My favorite was when I said to Domino "All the devs should make rangers" and you could hear Brenlo in the background reading it and kind of talking to himself saying "Pffffft why???"

People say rangers are fine or even OP'd in PvP but its a 100% consensus across any players who know or care that rangers are lacking in at least raid setups if not both groups and raids. Makes me think the dev team is just a bunch of PvP'ers/crafters who are reluctantly having to spend most of their time working on PvE because an overwhelming majority of players are PvE'ers. Think they need to just balance raids then everything else will just fall into place naturally. Except for maybe PvP so one server will be annoyed.

duddwin wrote:

akaglty wrote:

I've been thinking of the best way to respond to this since yesterday. There's a part of me that can completely understand his frustration. As Senior Producer the man has to develop a roadmap for the game, figure out how to get his staff there, all while taking the balance of the full spectrum of game into account. The devs have done some significant work the past few months (of beta) on bringing, or at least starting the process thereof, several classes back in line. Rangers who have some long standing complaints did get some love but went bezerk once we saw itemzation (which while I disagree with how some communicated it I completely agreed with the concern). We had already hijacked a few threads along the way and it only went downhill from there. Even those who had been the most civil and worked hard to provide evidence of our concerns went rabid and those who came in later to beta just kept that frenzy going. Over the past few weeks we have had a large amount of vitriol and for a man who probably wasn't planning on taking on ranger concerns this go-around now keeps hearing about rangers instead of getting to promote all good things that have been done. I'd probably be pretty frustrated to.
That said, we have our concerns for a reason and we a long history of actions taken that has brought down from being overpowered to the lower end of the spectrum of the "T1 DPS classes". The degregation has been steady and as a community we don't want to see the gap grow further between now and "our next turn". We have our most talented players jumping ship becuase they do more damage with less headaches and we the rest of us don't want to look up in two years to find out that we should have done the same just so we can get Groups and Raid spots. Thus the growing frustration.
Personally I want to see how things look once we have had some time to see how all the mechanics changes (especially the stat consolidations and the resulting gear) work. I want to see some "real world" parses to understand where things stand. I want to see if Rothgar can figure out the Ranged/Melee Auto Attack default flag and how Xel wants to handle several of our issues. I have faith that several of the devs want to do what is best for the game (including rangers) and if nothing else want to make sure the T1 DSP classes are balanced in some structure. I have not personally lost hope yet but I do find the stories of comments made by Brenlo, such as those above, incredibly disheartening. It is only human nature to ignore that which annoys you and if he's willing to so openly show his distaste for a class, it's community and their concerns then it leaves me wondering if we are always going to come out 2nd priority every time there is an option to look at a ranger concern vs any other item that he isn't annoyed by. I guess we'll just have to see.

I have always enjoyed Nevao thoughtful and reasonable posts. Someone is needed to keep a calm perspective about it. His posts are what enabled me to stick with beta and EQ2 until release of SF. So thanks Nevao
Testing AutoAttack with fabled main and offhand vs. my Mythical on live day removed all hope for me. Melee autoattack was roughly 500DPS better than my Mythical Autoattack. Something so basic and intrinsic to the way a Ranger is played. Soon we will regain the 2m minimum on bow autoattack. The predator tree. Casting recasting and ca damage. Uility, lack of dps, grouping logic ......
I personally have given up. I let my guild/raid team know I am retiring. They have indicated they don't want me to go but the fun is just not there for me anymore. I and many Rangers chose this class to compete for top parse. I am a competitive person. It is an aspect of the game I really enjoy. With all of the howl we get samll changes and nothing being addressed as to real and proven complaints. Nothing to help us regain our primary role and become a viable desireable class to group or raid with.
I stuck through the DoF nerfs when they crippled Stream of Arrows and removed the ability to move and cast CA's. As I remember it seened a result of PvP complaints. I may be wrong.
I was there for EoF debacle and still retained hope. RoK saw another nerf to our abilities and the TSO still more problems mostly item based. And now SF. Not once in all that time have we had workable corrections to our compaints. But we are evidently irritating developers with our strident complaints. Strange for all those years I thought of myself as a customer of SoE.
I have no interest in hanging around another few years in hope of a correction. I no longer have a hope that we (meaning rangers) will be fixed. I just don't see any level of interest, from the developer perspective. They are concerned now, not that we have any real problems, but that they introduced a flurry proc thateven they recognize as unfair. And we get a response not that they will fix it but they will look into it. Does that give you faith? They have said nothing about closing the gap, allowing us to compete for the DPS top spot. Nothing about grouping logic, nothing. Simply they would look into flurry and its affect or its lack on rangers.
That is nothing that addresses our (at least my) concerns. Nothing about grouping logic, nothing about our unworkable role in PvE. I could care less about PvP or BG, but try to get even a BG group invite. I am not going to spend the time between now and July begging guildies for inclusion to a group when they can get better DPS and utility elsewhere. We have cleared through Mynzak and they kept me in my slot the whole way through. We worked the whole progression together as a guild not buying myths but earning them. At this point I believe they are better off with a real dps class as I see no hint of an improvement for rangers.
Unfortunately I pay a year subscription at a time. Mine does not run out until July so what I do will be of no impact to SoE. Never the less I will no longer raid and hold my guild back because I refuse to buy SF. They cannot carry someone stuck at lvl 80 and 200AA for long. And I am not going to extend my hopes even another week. At this point I have removed EQ2 from my computer. It is actually kind of a relief finally giving up.
A sincere best of luck to the rest of you

1st question: How many PVP servers are there?
2nd question: How many PVE servers are there?

When you answer those questions. WTH are they obsessing about PVP. I thought this game was PVE first and PVP as a secondary? I know we're not the only complaining class but seriously. Start looking at the mechanics of it and start working on it. This is only going to get worse as more and more lvl to the cap and then really start in on the content of this expansion. They obviously know what the issues are. Its a matter of assigning ppl in the next few weeks to start addressing them. I understand that you can't do a heck of a lot pre and post expansion release and thats fine.. We've been dealing with it long enough that we can deal with it slightly longer but soon its going to get to the point where its going to start taking effect more then it did before.
Brenlo if you wanna make this game bettter then stop fooling around with fluff projects and start fixing the game itself. The player base plays the game first and then all the extras second. And if they don't then why the heck is there a main game to begin with? Its definatly evident that there was far too much on the plate for this xpac. Focus on 1 or 2 things and not 10 and maybe things would get done on time and done right.

I can't at this point say how it will be at 90, since I am only at 82 so far. So far though, my ranger seems more capable of T1 dps than I expected from previewing the changes on test. I am glad to be surprised.

Jack@Lucan DLere wrote:

Maybe you expected to just keep clicking the revive button for hours on end after the test server, but you have to be smoking crack to think youll be anywhere near T1 dps. Rangers have not been T1 dps since maybe EOF, and I only say that because scouts did pretty well then. I dont think we have been anywhere near assassins even back then.