Ranger weapons
 

Curious to what you guys think is better. Woodsman's Staff or two 1 hand weapons like 1:2 damage delay ratios or lets just say lamentation blades. At lvl 20+. Thanks

Prior to raid upgrades a woodsman's staff was my best dps weapon slightly ahead of a lupine dagger/wurmslayer combo. I never had a chance to parse lower levels with those weapons tho, I assume it would still come out on top.

Definately go with a 2 hander (swarm or woodsman's). The ability to cast your nukes in between sword swings, without losing any swings in the process, will increase your damage more then DW will (at least through most of this era, and up till you can get the epics). Ditto for snare/flame lick and maintaining threat. Really, if you're not using your spells, you should be a rogue instead, and a 2h works with spells much better then DW does.

Thanks for the info.

Also, what really starts to make dual wield shine is the main hand damage bonus, and you won't have enough of that to matter until around level 50. The ratio on two handed weapons is so superior, even without the spell casting benefits, you'd be hard pressed to get a dual wield setup that was better until your damage bonus gets to 8 or 9.

Don't forget you can self-heal or off-heal between swings as well, not just nukes, which I forgot to mention. This is a great way to make up for your decreased damage mitigation if you're in a tanking position, and helps hold threat as well. I can only imagine it would that much more awesome for pallies, but they don't get out leet dps ;).

really so casting a spell doesn't restart melee swing timers?

No. What happens is that weapon swings are put on hold until the casting finishes. The timer keeps running, so that if you come up for a swing during the cast, the timer pauses and the swing will occur the instant the cast finishes. The timer then restarts counting from that swing. So, if you are DWing you will be losing multiple swings during a 2sec cast spell. With careful timing you can easily fit that same spell in between 2h weapon swings and lose nothing.

While under high level haste (item+raid buffs, etc) even a 2h will lose time to a spell, although still not as much. Under raid conditions then, DW may be superior. Since the ranger Epic is DW, I'm almost certain in fact, at least once you get them. Someone with access to that kind of encounter would have to parse the numbers to be sure with other weaps.

Whats a good starting Bow for a ranger... I already tossed a couple nice weapons i got from seb to my ranger but i need a good bow to get him started as well.