SKs are top-notch XP-group tanks + amazing pullers.

Rangers are mediocre melee DPS + good pullers (if outdoors) and spot CC.

Classes with CC abilities or good sustained DPS are a dime a dozen on this server. Tanks are pretty rare.

What's so hard to understand about why a group would be more willing to deal with a SK's xp penalty than a ranger's?

Velious right?

Because at the end of the day there is almost no group content hard enough to need min/maxing, and if you're willing to handle one class's exp penalty, it makes no sense to not be willing to handle another's.

On this server, even "mediocre" dps outgears whatever content it's doing by a substantial amount in almost all situations, and you're talking maybe individual seconds longer to drop a mob.

I have the same shock when people say they don't want a wizard in the group. Makes no sense to me at all.

Lemme know how your xp group of 3 rangers and 3 wizards in HS west works out for you.

So let me get this right, if someone plays an SK, they are instantly a great tank and an amazing puller ? But that same person then rolls a Ranger they suddenly become only a good puller if they are lucky enough to be in an outdoor zone ?

So none of it is gear dependant or player skill based ?

thanks for you insight..

Because insanely non-conventional groups in arguably the "hardest" groupable area of the game is at all the discussion point here.

I'll be happy to let you know how a SK, Ranger, Wizard, Necro, Cleric, Druid group did though, because that group can clear it despite being 80% full of classes that are "terrible for grouping".

Rangers rely on Harmony to pull. Outdoors with tracking and harmony a ranger can deliver a stream of single pulls easily. Indoors they have 0 ways to split (well aside from the perennially OP invis pulling, but literally any class can do that). Skill has nothing to do with it.

Meanwhile SK tools (FD/CoS/dots) work fine indoors. Splitting is trivial; cast darkness on something, CoS, run away for 20 seconds, FD, stand up, CoS, run back, wait for mobs to reset (snared mobs don't reset), check aggro, go.

Meh, any DPS that wants to fap so hard to their parser that they are aggro magnets and mana pits pretty much find their way to another group... don't open with Ice Comet, yaknow?

And as far as min/maxing goes, I don't do it. I think it dehumanizes players into a set of stats. If they want to play XYZ, I don't care, as long as they know their job an do it well. The game is about people, otherwise you run the risk of turning into another content locust, and find your game turning into an uphill treadmill.

- Brimacombe

I've met shit rangers and good rangers

Good rangers CAN tank. Just gotta play the class right. Would tak a paladin over anything for a tank thou tbh

Ages away yet...and I meant just rangers :p