Ok, let me set the scene for ya's. Level 70 ranger x2. yes this is the second ranger ive leveled to 70. 95 aa's all multishot aside from stream, double arrow, caustic, 5 second reduct on snare shot and 5 points into focus aim. Predator tree is the classic agi to poise and int to crit bonus. Oh, every master in game to boot. now, we're techincally off of raiding due to the holidays but to keep boredom to a minimum we decided an impromptu labs raid last night considering we barely had 3 groups on. During the "break" from raiding we had a server xfer swashbuckler join our ranks. Now i'll admit he outgears me by a bit, and ill just assume he has full masters as well. our parses kinda looked like me behind the assassins as usual, and occasionally the necro.. but now, the swash was even battling for 1st and 2nd with the 2 assassins. Whats the deal? I'd like to hear some justification other than fanboism on how or why a swashbuckler, regardless of gear can outdps a fully mastered ranger close to EVERY fight. p.s. i have 20 aa's on him, apparently doesnt do much though =P flame away, all good, is what i came here for.. cause im agitated, fed up, and ranting. So rant back if it makes ya feel better!
Cant downplay the Swashy DPS. Gotta remember they arent exactly a utility class, they are DPSers with the tricks we rangers have been beggin for. They also have a spike DPS mod similar to our Focus Aim. And considering trash go down fast in labs, its not unusual to see a swashy hit the top on trash. How was he doing on the named/extended fights? Also what weaponry did he have? Was he in a pro-melee group? Maybe getting a few extra buffs?
Its the world works . Might I ask if you have t8 ammo or not? And what your parsing for to begin with?
it's impossible to speculate because we dont know exactly what you or he did. what order did you cast your CAs in? what order did he cast his in? do you melee or just range attack? and like a million other factors.
If I had to guess, and I do, I would say take a look at the number of swings for the swash vs. the number of swings for the ranger. I group w/ a swash regularly, and they just plain out hit more times, as far as I can tell. Faster melee aa maybe? Just guessing. Message Edited by Badaxe Bart on 12-29-2006 02:54 PM
Well actually rangers have the potential to be one of the best dps classes in raids at the present time. In order to get there you have to have some very specific things tho. You have to be geared very well including 2 bows ( an ammo summoner and a 100+dr bow ). An illusionist , an inquisitor, a dirge or a zerker. Then it's all about getting the timing down. The real problem is that the largest place for increases in ranger damage comes from autoattack. I only have one combat art that can currently outdamage my autoattack and that's sniper shot. So what happens is you have rangers that aren't geared as well suffering and ones that are totally geared rocking the parses due to the current combat mechanics. A lot of other dps classes don't have this problem since most of their dps comes from combat arts. So they can do better dps with not as specific gear. Message Edited by AfflictedOne on 12-29-2006 04:25 PM
well, as for long duration fights, our parses were a closer call to one another, but thats my arguement... a swash sure as hell brings more to a group/raid than we do so it bugs me that a rogue is challenging a predators (beating) a predators dps. as for my parses they were from 1300 to 2000 and his were more from 1700 to 2000. groupwise he had much better luck. I was stuck w/ just me and an inq. as for gear, afraid no t8 ammo nor 100+dr bow. Im sure group+gear played alot into it but still to beat a pure dps class more often than not? Boooo i say.
No T8 ammo and no 100+ Dr bow, and just an inquiz in group. Thats not that bad I have T8 ammo, 9?.? DR Heartstinger, fabled gear, full M1's, and do the numbers he was and then some. Ask your raid leaders for some buffs. We ARE buff "magnites" , get some use of that Primal buff :smileywink:
Also, if there are multiple targets, a Swash will out DPS you easy, they get quite a few aoe's using their blades
getting top dps is more about luck than anything else. If I have coercer and use focus and manage to get crit hits I can hit 10k auto ranged, (best 10.4k) 3 or 4 major crit hits and ive done 25k plus damage in 15 seconds. If on the other hand I dont get the crits then you can divide by 2. Again on luck if i use rain of arrows and get crit hits can do 6-7k on each target if not then 3-4k Like I said ages ago we have to pray for the crit hits to do good dps while other classes can use their CA's normally... life as a ranja is fair
Untill you get the rarest bows in the game its not fair.. Once you get them its fair.. Again, biggest problem out there is itemization and "melee only" buffs and the amount of arrows consumed.
How well you dps in the end is very dependent upon: 1) How you fight your ranger, i.e.; the proportion of ranged vs. melee, the proportion of autoattack vs. CAs, etc 2) Your personal stats (more later) 3) Your group and group buffs (more later) 4) Your gear Now the thing is, rangers do somewhat more dps vis autoattack than many classes. In my own case, roughly 40% of my damage comes from autoattack. Of that total autoattack damage, roughly 80% is bow autoattack. As a comparison, procs from other classes never add more than about 1% each to the total damage I do...given that there are relatively few procs that work off ranged attacks (f'ing SoE), then I would much rather be in a group that enhances my autoattack than one that gives me procs. So in my mind, the key to upping ranger dps is upping autoattack damage. Sooo... A. Make every autoattack opportunity fire. Don't delay them with CAs and time your melee attacks wisely. B. Up your strength as much as possible (generally you should always be using Elixer of Fortitude). An alternative might be Elixer of Tactics which also ups autoattack dps. C. Get in a group that buffs your strength (1st), dps % (2nd), Haste (3rd). D. Use as good a bow as you can, obviously with the best arrows you can. In general, you should use a slow longbow even if it is slightly below the damage rating of a shortbow. Simply because you can time your autoattacks better and the longbow will have a higher crit damage top end. Now I did not mention poisons, because all predators/rogues should always use them. And all things being otherwise equal, the amount of damage each predator/rogue should do with poisons should be roughly equal. But I by no means am suggesting they are irrelevant. Quite the contrary. Poisons do roughtly 10%-15% of my total damage. So always ensure you are using Grandmaster Caustic Poison and also get your INT as high as you can through equipment and from group buffs. If a tradeoff is required, however, strength is still more importatnt than INT. Remember, STR also has the benefit of upping your CA damage. In my opinion, the above will keep you roughly equal with Swashies, if not slightly ahead of them dps-wise. Of course, the fact that they also bring significant utility to any raid along with their dps is part of the problem that rangers currently face. But that is a different subject...
even with best bow a swashy, assassin, briggy, necro, wizzie can out dps us. the point i was trying to make is in order for us to get close we have to be lucky with crit hits
I disagree with everybody for the most part. My groups consist of a Fury, illusionist, brigand, troub, wizzard and a ranger ( me ) in raids. Before I had gotten my new Sarnak Warbow I was parsing about 1400-1500 in that group in freethinkers on any fight that I had my timers up ( we kill way to fast for my timers to be up every fight ) I would parse about 1200 - 1400 without my timers up. After I got my Sarnak Warbow I was parsing about 1900 - 2100 when I had my timers up and about 1500 - 1700 when I had my timers down. Now as a ranger you need to weigh your luck on certain things. Here is a list of why my group is the way it is. Higher INT = 1900 - 2100 caustic crits Decent STR, but str dosen't add much to dps. Illusionist = DOUBLE ATTACK and HASTE! Troub = the best things of all, haste, str and the most important jesters cap. ( ask your troub in your group to cast jesters cap on the inc on boss fights and this will improve your dps by about 300 - 500 on fights) Its not all about packing around people who can give you crazy dps mod, give it to yourself. Troubs will do jesters cap, you pop your focus aim then after that wears off you pop killing instinct to increase dps mod before the jesters cap wears off, do what you need to do and all your CAs will be back up in 30 seconds including Focus Aim. Other classes dig deep and want the " death groups" but if you take advantage of what is offered and know EVERYTHNIG about the classes in the group you are in, then and only then you can take advantage of what they offer to you. BTW I do not have T8 ammo, those numbers are without it. Aroumon Swiftshot 70 Ranger Najena Second Dawn
I wanna know what you're getting your int up to tohave caustic crit that high. Still trying to work out where I'm lacking in my playstyle to parse as high as some of you. I've got the T8 ammo, just need a bow...-still- using wurm destroyer.
Well no offence but thats a kick [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn] group, any ranger who aint putting out great dps with a illusionist in their group should be ashamed of themselves. Though again DPS in my opinion is a far better buff than haste, we buff haste and there are plenty of items that boost haste, however there are none that add dps.
I just got my highest ever hit yesterday in Obelisk with my Ranger - 10,962 damage with Sniper Shot (Adept III) using Grizzfazzles Bow and summoned arrows. I'm in the top 100 hitters on Runnyeye server now My Ranger is a nonraider too so well chuffed with my dps heh
Nah, its not that great of a group we have a group with a dirge,inq,coercer...and 3 melee dps. Anyways here is some ways to improve your poison damage in raids. Other classes who debuff mitigation towards all magical damage and/or poison. Assassins are a good one to debuff mitigation towards poison. There are adornments that can be placed on your weapons that add + to poison damage that helps and is nice when the poison crits ( this can also be added to your bow but the +12 pierce out parses it ) Poison debuff coordination. To have the poison debuff to take its full effect you will need to have somebody use it that can always bedoing either fast damage or high delay damage that can almost consitantly keep it up on boss or encounter ( a ranger or brigand are the best options ). And more INT dosen't hurt. Also you may want to invest in the +damage to all spell types because that will effect any elemental based attacks and procs and poisons. Spell crit chance adornements are also worth while to get in spots that don't have something better for you. The problem with rangers does not exsist in our abilities or in the lack of damage we can do in extended fights. The problem with ranger DPS is we try the same thing over and over without any devience from the original plan that we don't figure out ways to improve ourselves. Aroumon Swiftshot 70 Ranger Najena Second Dawn
On multi mob encounters without mezing a swashbuckler can do a good amount more damage since we have Hurricane (44% chance at AD3 for our primary melee weapon to hit up to 4 targets frontal) 2 nice AoEs and one that refreshes fairly quickly (30 seconds for our lower dmg one and 1 minute for our higher dmg one, both able to do 1100+dmg at M1). Assuming he has enhanced inspired daring we have a buff that adds 400-500+ damange to every attack for 13 seconds on a 2 minute and 40 second recast. We have our Bravado ability which is a 60%+ haste buff that procs on us and is almost always up, most of our damage AAs were in the rogue line from KoS so he probably has all of those. They include +% crit increase, +72% double attack if if weilds a 1h weapon and has the wisdom line from KOS, with a fabled 1h weapon that is considerable auto attack damage which goes back to our Hurricane ability. Labs has a lot of multi-mob groups in it, this is where we can be most effective with Hurricane (as long as we are using it), also our poison will proc off hurricane. We have En Garde and Lunge Reversal, these abilities give us extra attacks if the mob parries/deflects/dodges/riposites and also if we do any of those ourselves we can perform the attack on the target. Lunge Reversal is a 20 second refresh ability (always on but only triggers once every 20 seconds) and can do 800dmg if we have it at AD4, its an Acheivment ability. En Garde is a 2 minute 40 second recast (assuming you have the enhancement AA) and is a 15% chance to trigger and it can also trigger off any combat art we perform and does around 600-700dmg at M1. Rangers have the T8 ammo bottleneck, as a swashbuckler I have 1 ranged attack and I can carry tin ammo and use it because it does cold damage. As said before there are a lot of other factors, who was in the group with the swashbuckler, how was he using his Combat Arts, was he using hurricane, what was his gear like, how was he using his special abilities (Ruthless Cunning, Perfect Finesse, En Garde, Inspiration) etc. Message Edited by Delowen on 01-02-2007 12:00 AM
Not sure if that was including me but if it was. Str raises all of our AutoAttack & CA's damage. It will account for a **Huge** portion of our dps. If you aren't over the "curve" for Str when group buffed you are losing MORE DPS both via AutoAttacks and Combat Arts, then the ""potential damage"' from poisons and procs. Don't get me wrong, INT is important, but its a distant 2nd stat for us. I was pulling those numbers without a Sarnak but I did have T8 ammo/Recurved Heartstinger. Now that I have a Sarnak they are even higher. How you ask? Cause I made Str my #1 priority when it comes to stats. If I'm not STR buffed over the curve, I'll ask for a group that does buff Str or other buffs that will make up for not getting it. ie DPS buff #1, then INT buff #2, then Haste buff #3, DPS buffs > INT buffs every time. That above group is OK, but we can be buffed much better. And yes, we are buff horrors :smileyvery-happy: (mispelt on purpose)
