Ranger

[mgb64029]

I want to play a ranger, but I am curious as to why exactly they are considered a joke in this game. Are they viable in raiding at all?

[Legidias]

When they walk in a forest and get lost from track bugs, they trip and die from fall damage.

[bigjeff100]

Today a ranger scolded me on littering my foraged items around Toxx. He gracefully picked them up, lectured, and went on his way.

[stebbins99]

Today a ranger scolded me on littering my foraged items around Toxx. He gracefully picked them up, lectured, and went on his way.

Hahah that's hilarious!

But, OP, one of my buddies plays a ranger and loves it. Like many melee classes, they seem to scale better as their gear improves. Also, being able to "track" stuff is pretty dang cool and rangers are the best in the biz.

My ranger buddy's main complaints: he's a "paper tank" and requires an attentive healer in order to group. Rangers generally do pretty good DPS and, coupled with their spells, tend to draw agro pretty easily. Rangers don't have the same type of defensive skills and HP as true tanks, this can cause them to go down fast if things go sour.

My ranger buddy's compliments to the class: great DPS (especially as gear improves), the ability to cast SoW (which helps to improve survivability), and being an awesome group puller in outdoor zones (thanks to the spell Harmony). Harmony is an awesome spell that allows you to separate outdoor mobs with virtually no risk-- I'd suggest reading up on it.

I bet it would be a fun class to twink-out if you had a ton of cash! But, even if you don't have the means to twink-out a ranger, I'd still strongly suggest playing the class you are interested and invested in. Good luck!

[Jimjam]

A ranger is a clerics best friend!

You know why?

That group with four fungi twinkled monks? They are never going to need a heal; there is no incentive to add a strong heal class.

That group with a ranger tank? They are literally dieing for the best heals and extra AC buffs in the game.

Plus, with all the Rez donations you're going to be putting the church of Innoruuk's daughters through college without them having to moonlight at the Maiden's Fancy.

[Crede]

I want to play a ranger, but I am curious as to why exactly they are considered a joke in this game. Are they viable in raiding at all?

Any class that isn't optimized for raiding generally gets blown up to some degree, especially on the forums. Rangers aren't the best dps, they really can't tank, and their spells kinda blow.

But yet I posted a thread about the most overall fun class at 60 a few months back and ranger won by far. Just one of those classes where you need to acquire a lot of things in your toolkit to start to really make a difference. Epic, haste cloak, good gear, etc. Combine all that, you have a class that can raid dps, do a lot of solo/track stuff, farm greens, group dps/pull, "tank" in certain situations, easy porting to Fay for banking, etc. You also finally get some decent spells at 55+ like chloro, sln, DS(can PL noobs to some extent) and their beloved atk buff. Hardest part is getting to that point.

Good luck

[Meiva]

A ranger is a clerics best friend!

You know why?

That group with four fungi twinkled monks? They are never going to need a heal; there is no incentive to add a strong heal class.

I mean, no.

I have nothing against rangers, and they can tank just fine in many situations. That group with four fungi twinked monks and a cleric finds a good, quiet, ZEM zone and pulls as much as the cleric could possible handle.

An Enchanter is a clerics best friend.

[YendorLootmonkey]

I want to play a ranger, but I am curious as to why exactly they are considered a joke in this game. Are they viable in raiding at all?

If you want to have fun playing a class that can fulfill many different roles and adapt to a changing situation in a group, try a ranger.

If you want to be constantly sought after in groups, do not try a ranger. Unless you're willing to go /anon, wear silver plate armor, not cast any spells, and sell yourself as a warrior with shitty HP. Which I did to get groups in some level ranges while the hybrid XP penalty still existed. Not proud, but whatever it takes to get some XP, right?

If you want to feel important/needed in raids -- outside of a 2-minute Trueshot window with an endgame bow, eating a death touch, being a Weaponshield transition for your main tanks, your raid leader ran out of food/drink and you have to spend the entire raid foraging off to the side out of everyone's way (at least that's what I was told) or the occasional outdoors dragon pull because no bards showed up -- do not try a ranger. No one has ever said "Oh fuck, we don't have enough rangers... send tells for ports/TLs outta here."

[Veleria]

Ranger is a great class. Honestly, if you are this late to the server they are a great class unless you absolutely want to be the best at one thing. You won't be the best tank or the best dps but you will do enough to justify your place in most groups. They are not the best at anything but good enough at what they do to do well in a variety of situations. Rangers are very gear dependant like all melee classes except "maybe" monk. You have a lot of tools that can help in many situations but since they have a bad reputation mostly based on mechanics that are no longer relevant there is a bit of an uphill battle for respect. If you like the playstyle go for it because a level 60 character that is suboptimal is better than a level 40 that you don't like to spend time on. Until level 60 you won't really add anything unique to a raid when you will get a situational but useful discipline and a group buff that is yours alone.

[deezy]

playing a ranger is definitely hard mode, but that was part of the fun for me. once those obstacles are overcome rangers become a very powerful class. they are very gear dependent, but once that gear is acquired they can complete with monks and rogues in raid dps, can tank in any xp group camp, and offtank in many raid situations.

[Legidias]

Their ability to match DPS in raids is based on getting 1 single item that a couple neckbeards camped a shit ton of the ground spawn before it was removed from game and regularly sell only 1 at a time to artificially keep price high.

[Ravager]

Reasons to play a Ranger: Easy plat cuz you see named spawns wherever you go. Free gear, because Ranger drops rot. Clicky port to Mistmoore for easy plat. SoW. Easy solo path to 60.


If you're afraid of not finding a group, just pick a place to hunt and build your own group. The latest patch made it easier to build groups than ever with the /who all lfg. All a Ranger needs is a healer (Druids are super easy to get) and can just add whoever to fill everyone else and group most anywhere.

[Jimjam]

I mean, no.

I have nothing against rangers, and they can tank just fine in many situations. That group with four fungi twinked monks and a cleric finds a good, quiet, ZEM zone and pulls as much as the cleric could possible handle.

An Enchanter is a clerics best friend.

The point is the group of monks aren't going to be as likely to invite the cleric as the one struggling with a ranger tank.

[Meiva]

The point is the group of monks aren't going to be as likely to invite the cleric as the one struggling with a ranger tank.

Ahhh, yes I do see that now. I don't see that a ranger is a clerics best friend, but I do get the point. The group may need the better heals if their tank is a ranger. The more I think about it, the more I think it is a comment on ranger shortcomings.

[Meguvin]

Rangers are pretty fun to play, but they are frustrating most of time. No good dps, no good heals and not good tanking.
But when u get good gear the thing turns a lot.
With my ranger i have:
Self haste 75%, slow proc 50%, atk buffs, decent heals.This things allowed me to duo many big things with clerics.
On raids im the only Ranger :D, CoP = atk group buff stackable with everything (that means the extra dps that everybody does are belong to you), i have BFG for big Raid mobs.
I made a lot of money soloing things like PSC, HBC, Tstaff, etc
We got an usefull track.
Now i can tank everything but raid things.
Best aggro holder
Best dps in group if no haster (you will be in that situation a lot)
Easy epic with best look!

[draznik]

Anyone here remember the ranger sit in / protests back in late 1999 ? (I think it was then) The whole ranger community from The Rangers Glade logged into one server, and basically took over Kelethin. Our famous leader was a guy named Sunmoon (I believe) and we were calling the devs out. We later moved into Crush and crashed the whole zone, and one of the devs finally logged in to talk to us. (they gave us Jolt)

Basically, rangers today are excellent compared to the train wreck we were at launch. I left the live servers with my half elf ranger at lvl 63, mainly because it's damn near impossible to catch up unless your IN a raid guild willing to help you. But here on P99 I'm way ahead of where I was back at launch. (now on P99 lvl 12 in a few days)

I would say this: most of the folks that put down the ranger class either never learned how to play one, or never grouped with a good one. We are a weird breed for sure. I can honestly say that I very rarely die solo, and death in groups was due to dumb asses not paying attention, getting wiped by trains. You can't "dabble" in ranger,... you gotta go all in ! Stick with it and you'll have a blast.

[Cecily]

At the end of the day you’re an avatar of a floating chat room handle that reduces the percentage bars of “monsters” in said chat room to zero. It really doesn’t matter how you reduce the percentage bar to zero. EQ isn’t hard. It’s a chat room.

[Xaeophi]

Rangers are AWESOME! - Monk tank fungi group? Lol, GL unless hes rocking a lot of BiS gear + Bis or near BiS Weapons. If the monks weapons suck he isnt tanking shit! The Enchanter will be tanking.
Aggro? 1.5 Second Cast time 10 mana SUPER Aggro Spell.
If geared properly and not like an idiot - you can tank whatever the fk you want except for unslowable mobs that do 600+
Weaponshield? Tank whatever the fk you want for 20 seconds without heals.
Fools will think " well ranger dies after that HA HA, rekt ranger gate!! "
Wrong.
Jolt down that aggro to the noob all the clerics are CHing.
Oh.. and theyre buffing rangers next update even more. Power overwhelming.

[Jimjam]

At the end of the day you’re an avatar of a floating chat room handle that reduces the percentage bars of “monsters” in said chat room to zero. It really doesn’t matter how you reduce the percentage bar to zero. EQ isn’t hard. It’s a chat room.

It's a chat room with swords, rangers are the only avatar to duel wield lightning swords, ergo rangers are best.

[jolanar]

Hardest part of a ranger is getting through the 40 to low/mid 50's slump that most melee's suffer.

Your duoing options are pretty unlimited though between aggro or fear kiting or tanking with a priest class.

[Meguvin]

Nah. Dúo with Rogue and destroy the world

[Jimjam]

Hardest part of a ranger is getting through the 40 to low/mid 50's slump that most melee's suffer.

Your duoing options are pretty unlimited though between aggro or fear kiting or tanking with a priest class.

I kited a whole bunch of (rabid) griffons in North Karana and Sabertooth Tigers in Overthere… This was back when it was a very popular bard kite spot. Apparently bards preferred not to kill tigers so there were often plenty up!

[Aabdel]

Clicky port to Mistmoore for easy plat.

Can you elaborate on this? Never heard of such a thing and can't find anything via Google or wiki

[Legidias]

Clicky (http://wiki.project1999.com/Tolan%27s_Darkwood_Breastplate)

[jolanar]

I'm guessing the person was being sarcastic. Mistmoore isn't a great farming zone, and spending 35k+ on an item just to farm 200p an hour isn't exactly a selling point.

[Twochain]

Lmfao Alleriah is a die hard ranger defender.


The truth is, 1-30 they are the worst melee class. my troll sk with 40k worth of gear did just as good as my 200k ranger twink...prolly better 1-30. Their DPS sucks, they are tanky as a rogue.. maybe even less? Just overall bad.

30-55 Meh. You have capabilities. Rangers make awesome tanks between these levels. Flame lick = insta agro. You can sow yourself. Tracking is cool. So is bow kiting, although entirely inefficient.

55-59 I can only imagine this shit is terrible. Nobody wants you in group. Soloing is slow. Wack.

60 Rangers.... let's put it this way. Under the current ToV meta, it's much better for your raid to have 15 rangers / 5 monks VS 15 monks / 5 rangers. Snap agro ability and weaponshield is so hot right now.

Above all that, Rangers are undoubtedly fun to play.... except when you're getting pwned by blue orcs at level 15.

my 2c =)

[Jimjam]

Rule of diminishing returns on those twinks Twochain.

Rogues and rangers aren't really any worse at tanking than the other melee until 40. There's not much difference in skill caps and AC is trivial to functionally cap.

[feniin]

45-59 on my ranger were the worst of days. Still prefer Ranger over nearly every class.

[Imago]

No doubt, 50-59 were horrible. Especially during the hybrid penalty era.

20-45? What a blast! I did it with minimal twink work and enjoyed it much more than my rogue (1st melee) or monk (heavy twink) in the same era.