Haha that's awesome. Sorry ;p

Rofl, i'd noticed more people looking for swiftblades and ivy armor. Now, if only the community as a whole can stop shafting us all and let us get groups, we might see some competent rangers being played for once.

I suggest we make posts like this every other week or so. lol

The point is, a well played ranger never HAS to do this. Harmony means bad pulls should never happen (if the ranger is alert for resists, and you're outdoors... yeah, it's not perfect), and adds can be root parked and aggro kept at the same time with smart spell usage. Meaning that when CC breaks, they head for the tank and not the clerics/enchanter. Multiple mobs may be on the ranger for a short time, but if they know their business then not for long.

I'll sidestep here and acknowledge that we do have inferior mitigation, and are not suitable as MT's for raids or when killing mobs more then 3-4 levels higher then us. In this case they would be OT and mob controller, using spell aggro to drag mobs to a desired position and parking them, controlling a bad pull almost as well as any enchanter could. Better in some situations, since they can drag mobs out of/into aoe's, away from the clerics, out of patrolling paths, etc. Then they DPS when not busy doing that. And on that point, if they are DWing and not using their nukes, they are doing less damage then they are capable of. 2h+spells between swings is > any DW combination (in this era, and until epics anyway. also assuming your MT can hold aggro through that storm of damage and the ranger doesn't need to hold back). If you're seeing rangers with crappy DPS, what you're seeing is players that don't know the class.

Nonsense. Root is not something to be entirely depended on. Besides, when the Ranger has 4 monsters banging on them, that's a lot of damage being taken before the roots land.

I grouped with a ranger for the first time on P99. I'm ashamed to say, that... it actually wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.

But from my experience on live, the only way a ranger finds a spot into groups during this time era is if he's a nice guy and makes friends.

1) Verant guy walks into room and says "Hey, I got an idea to make a jack-of-all-trades class and I want to name it Ranger.
2) Everyone nods their head and one says, "Those're in D&D. It fits."
3) Verant guy says, "But there's a problem. We all know that jack-of-all-trades are great by themselves or with a few people and can keep busy that way. But if you put them in a larger group, they do not have high enough specialization to be useful. For example, when a group looks for dps, they point at rogues or monks. When they look for tanks, they point at warriors. When they look for healers, they point at clerics. When they look for CC, they point at enchanters. Rangers sacrificed a lot to be ok in a lot of things. What do you think?
4) Guy with calculator says, "I saw this conversation coming."
5) One guy says, "It seems like a necromancer to me. It's a solo-class too and isn't great at specialization in groups. I don't see the problem."
6) Verant guy says, "We can't have too many solo-classes. Brad won't change his mind either. So we can't just make this another flavor of necromancer. It has to have sufficient grouping capacity."
7) Guy says, "Can't they be good at both soloing and grouping?"
8) Another guy nods his head.
9) Verant guy says, "Breaks the balance sheet. It's overpowering. They can't be jack-of-all-trades and at the same time replace an expert. You all know that. They can offer utility, but they'll never compare to a class that devotes itself to one or two things."
10) Guy says, "Which area would they be experts in if it didn't break the balance?"
11) Verant guy says, "Rangers are often axe wielders, hunters, bowman, trackers, wilderness sentries, even wielders of magic. Probably an offensive or sneaky class type."
12) Guy says, "Increase their offensives so they're more desired in groups and subtract some experience from their kills to compensate and meet your balance sheet."
13) Verant guy says, "It would be expensive. As they're right now, their offensives are several levels behind expert classes."
14) Guy says, "Boost it so it's not quite at the same level but still competitive and inconspicuous."
15) Verant guy says, "Alright, we'll try that. But I think there'll be a lot of groans. I think we'll eventually have to confront this problem again in the future."
16) Guy says, "One step at a time."
17) Math guy whispers to his buddy, "2x != x. This is all a bad idea. Either they need to allow for solo-classes with inferior specialization or they should just throw all this out and make rangers offensive-based."
18) His buddy says, "Won't experience penalties compensate for them breaking the bank?"
19) Math guy whispers, "Too many people here don't understand 2x != x, so no."

The math guy ended up being right. Rangers became offensive-based. We went from rooting/snaring/kiting/tanking/ccing/dpsing to dpsing (mostly) creatures that summon almost exclusively. Things hit harder and harder until finally tanking became a distant memory (except for raiders). Summoning almost completely destroyed rooting/snaring/ccing, alongside stagnation of our abilities and the flattening of abilities across the classes.

Some good things came of it though. More solo-capability for everyone. Which is something I think should have always been the case. But I think too many people are distracted by the superficial things and overlook that giving a class super high strength and super high hp does not make that class fun to play. Jack-of-all-trades are fun because of their larger tool box, not because they hit hard or have lots of hitpoints or can track.

I play a Ranger but I think I am going to give up on it. When Velious comes out we are not going to tank crap or kill for a crap solo. The mobs just hit way too hard for Rangers or even Monks. We will have to pick Light Blues to solo and that is just crazy.

Snaring and bow kiting is not my cup of tea for hours on end on LB mobs for the xp gained. I want to beat on things lol. Rangers never came into their own until AA's. And that is not going to happen on here.

Actually, when Velious comes out, Rangers get the Weaponshield discipline in which we will be very useful tanking and holding aggro for the first 18 seconds of an encounter until a CH chain gets established on the main tank. And secondly, you will be able to solo much better with Panic Animal/Snare.

That would help but Weaponshield discipline has a recast time of 4050 mimutes. So that is over an hour cooldown time. Hardly a big deal soloing.

The Panic Animal/Snare would help a lot though. Forgot about that.

I've never believed that Verant was stupid enough to add experience penalties blindly. That's what a lot of people say, but I sternly disagree. I believe hybrids were overpowered in some form, and this is why they implemented the penalties. We will never know the full story, more than likely. But I think players do a lot more stupid things than the developers do. Developers have reasons, even if they're not very good ones. Players don't need reasons because their money is not coming from the game.

People always ask why don't necromancers have a substantial experience penalty? Or magicians? They can solo just like rangers, if not better. They can group with some effectiveness too. What makes them different from a ranger? Well, to begin with, their pet cannot keep aggro from another player. This means that if they group with a rogue that the rogue cannot backstab because after the first couple hits the opponent will aggro the rogue and ignore the pet. This is a big negative. Second, necromancers primarily use dots and dots aren't as effective in groups. They use a lot of mana and since they don't use their full duration in groups then they're wasted. Third, there're problems with aggro and zoning. Pets don't always aggro what you want them to and have to be recast when you zone. Fourth, you can't invis without losing your pet. Fifth, there're lots of little things that make pets annoying and make pet classes less effective in a group. For example, most of their spells are personal-only or pet-based, not support based. They can't sow or heal or buff your hp/ac or give you haste or track for you or cure... Necro's get their first root at lvl 34 and magicians don't even have one. Lastly, I think that Verant did not want EQ to be a solo-game because they felt that the bond between guild mates and friends was made stronger by grouping. If rangers had just been another solo-class like the necro then this would be in opposition to the need for grouping and retention of long-time players.

Why am I so adamant? Because I played a ranger for a long time, from 1999 to 2001 and on up to a few years ago. I always liked the class. I didn't feel gimp. I felt lucky to be a ranger.

I think the fact that I played a ranger is why I enjoyed Eq more than many others.

I think that the divide between solo and grouping was unnecessary. There's no reason that players can't solo AND group. My ideal game would allow all players to solo and group and all classes would be different flavors of jack-of-all-trades. There would be no straight tanks or straight healers or straight damage dealers, at least not for very long. One idea is to allow for frequent skill resets so players can change their role. I don't think games that put people into one or two roles are any good - they're too boring. But more than that, people would group together because they simply cannot kill some things alone. They wouldn't group because they need a healer or a tank or a damage dealer or a crowd controller, they'd group because they need more. And a lot of modern games are going in this direction. The only thing I think some of them miss is that games are not fun unless a player is kept busy with his tool box. If there're not enough tools then a player just gets bored. Some of them don't get this. They make things easy and accessible, but fail to make the gameplay interesting.