Quote:
Originally Posted by Noselacri
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Anyway, anecdotal evidence is fun, so here's mine: I played a ranger twice, once as my very first character up to level thirty-something eleven years ago and then as my main from Luclin to GoD.
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Also, to point out... if you played up to level 30-something years ago, you were probably okay tanking mobs unless you were doing that in the Kunark/Velious era. But you wouldn't have had epics at level 30-something so I suppose you're drawing more on your later experience.
In which case, after Luclin release, if you recall... unless you were one of those stubborn ones who held onto the "rangers should be melee DPS!" concept, the paradigm shifted to archery DPS for rangers with the introduction of AAs, in which case you kept Swiftwind in hand for the haste, Earthcaller in your main just for the stats unless you had something better stat-wise, and plinked the shit out of mobs with no aggro risk with EQ/AM3 for max DPS.
For raids, rangers had basically three primary roles...
1) Ranged DPS, in which case you maxed DEX gear for crits with EQ/AM3/Trueshot and resist gear in case your bow range did not exceed AE range (I just made Starwynd drool).
2) Weaponshield tanking (to let warriors establish initial aggro on high-DPS mobs)
3) Add kiting (more circumstantial on the encounter than the first two)
None of which involved issues with melee weapons at all except for (2), where you wanted the mob on you anyway.
But since we will never see Luclin here, we will never have the first role except for maybe the duration of our Trueshot disc in Kunark.
Also, and I will admit memory may not serve me correctly on this, but I thought I remembered in classic, a high level ranger was generally considered to be bad-ass and didn't yet have the HP/AC/mitigation issues that were revealed with the Kunark expansion. So I don't know if the mechanics changed drastically with Kunark release and were never rolled back properly here, or maybe I just remember incorrectly on this point.