Quote:
Originally Posted by stormlord
[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
The druid was mediocre in groups. They had a lot of dots and dots don't work well in groups. Their heal wasn't on the level of a cleric. So were necromancers. They also had a lot of dots. But both these classes were really good at soloing. Rangers, by comparison, were better than average at soloing, and while ok in groups, their dps and tanking ability falls short of the classes that focus on those things.
I still feel to this day that there was something in the code that genuinely made rangers overpowered. That's why they added the exp penalty. Unfortunately, it's missed on the vast majority of us. My guess is it was an argument made on loose logic and in the long run failed. Maybe, for example, they thought root or snare was too powerful. However, it turned out that dps and tanking were more important for the ranger in a group and the ranger wasn't good enough at those things. Clearly, the classes that focused on something were more popular and made it to the higher levels at a greater rate.
Go here to see how the class popularity fared on project 1999:
http://www.project1999.org/forums/sh...7&postcount=48
You can see the paladins and shadowknights had worse (lasting) popularity than rangers. In fact, rangers did better than druids at translating popularity in -all- previous level tiers to max level.
Of course, the popularity of rangers, like paladins and shadowknights, never exceeded about 9% of the class population share, and at max level, never exceeded 2%. (note: on this particular chart)
Btw, I played a ranger starting in Mar 99. I didn't even know back then that they had an exp penalty. |
I played a ranger back in 99 also.
Here's the thing... you're just wrong. Who solos worse than rangers? Rogues, warriors, clerics and *maybe* paladins (they can fight undead pretty well).
So how can that be better than average? Its actually mediocre or worse.
They were one of the least desirable in groups also... even druids got more groups and they were much better in other areas.
I loved my ranger, but mainly because of the idea of the class; not because of actual gameplay value. The ONLY thing rangers did well was track in classic EQ... that's it. You can insinuate that people don't get it, but they do.... the class blows.
Give something that the ranger does better than the majority of other classes besides track?