Comparison of melee hybrid classes.

[Bockscar]

Originally Posted by valithteezee [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

oh yeah, centi was luclin haha my B. Snare CAN be expected to land. What do you mean? It's got a very very low casting time and any ranger worth his salt is going to make sure he spams the hell out of it until it lands. Especially in the beginning people are not going to have MR resist items maxed.

It depends how they code resists in the end, but assuming they try to get it as close to classic as possible and do a decent job of it, it's plenty possible for melees to get enough MR for spells like snare to virtually never land. If you want to spend the first 45 seconds of every fight trying to snare somebody, you're welcome to do so - you'll probably just die. Even if you do snare someone, you can't take any melee class toe to toe except maybe rogues, and most people will just pumice any root/snare that lands anyway.

The real problem with the ranger class is that it lacks raw power. They have lots of little tools and utility, but without the power to back it up, they're nothing. Unimpressive DPS, complete inability to do burst damage (jousting, big nukes, HT, melee crits, backstab etc.) and no real survivability the way paladins and priest classes have. Maybe if rangers were the ones with feign death instead of shadowknights, they'd have a place in high-end PvP. Since they don't have anything unique or valuable at all and lack an area of expertise worth mentioning, they're just the bottom-feeder class in classic.

[valithteezee]

Bock, I wholeheartedly agree man. Rangers get the bard syndrome in classic where they don't really excel at any one thing. But this isn't a BOTB competition where we are going to be 1vs 1 an SK in a joust match. People are going to be rolling around with crews so having a ranger around is going to be AWESOME. Rangers have insane utility, decent sustained dps, chain armor etc and are the best trackers. They have great synergy with bards and bow-kiting also. Hopefully there will be no MQ so a ranger will actually be needed. And in the off-chance that snare does land and it gets buried deep that's pretty awesome.

[Bockscar]

They don't have insane utility. The only thing they do well enough for anyone to care about is tracking, and any crew is gonna have a druid and bard anyway. Ranger spells are basically druid spells -20 levels and the only really valuable spell they have that pretty much every other caster doesn't have is SoW, again also provided by the two most overplayed classes.

What insane utility would you say rangers have that makes it worth taking a ranger over a druid or shadowknight, for instance?

[valithteezee]

I'm not adding resists into the mix really. Since from 1-40 nobody is going to have resist gear. 1-40 will be at least the first few weeks of the server and rangers can be pretty annoying with keeping people rooted/snared/dispelled all the time so i consider this utility. There's going to be a lot of casters without shit for resists so a ranger that's constantly in their face and making sure they are disabled is pretty powerful imo. They also aren't targeted in PVP like a druid would be and have considerably higher hp's than a druid. The ranger is probably going to be the last to be targeted as well so he can stay in the mix a bit longer.

I'm not saying in a 3vs3 it wouldn't be better to have another class, but I just think rangers are a bit underrated is all.

[Cast]

only read lethdars replies, definitely roll rangers dudes snare+melee will kill anyone, pretty sure you'll have flamelick and light healing too bros go get em

[Bockscar]

Any melee except monks can have 90-100MR by level 30 if they spend the extra time to get it instead of just sitting in one zone grinding endlessly. Most of the classic resist gear is shit like bs mantle, drt and JC items.

[Graym]

This thread is total horseshit. VZTZ was not even remotely similar to live and was a joke of a server because of changes they made which completely changed how PVP worked and instead of rewarding skill, rewarded people who played on VZTZ the longest with all too important magic resist gear. The vast majority of the "changes" screwed Rangers. In reality, on Live Rangers were the #1 or #2 best pvp class through Velious.

First big advantage, they could cast Spirit of the Wolf. On live you practically never got hit by an MR spell if your resist was 100 or higher which almost everyone on the server could easily obtain. Players routinely stacked their movement buffs at the bottom, Jboots / Spirit of the Wolf and there was a constant fight to debuff using the casted pumice stones (post nerf) versus people clicking items to keep their buffs up. Basically before engaging you could spend as long as you wanted constantly removing buffs until you got rid of that SoW. Sometimes it took me 10-15 minutes, but I started every fight SoW versus Jboots and even if someone removed my SoW I would immediately run away, throw up a couple junk buffs then recast it. Even the people using potions once the crap buffs hiding it were gone you could easily take it off again or interrupt the person trying to recast it. I always had the speed advantage in EVERY SINGLE FIGHT because of this and when you are trying to catch a running caster, or jousting with another melee, it's a HUGE advantage. Fights never went like this on VZTZ because with MR changed, and people rootable, snarable there is no reason to fight over the best Speed Buff.

Which goes to advantage #2. Fast dual wielding weapons. On Live, every melee hit caused a push of the caster. The further the caster was moved from the spot they started casting, the higher the interrupt rate was. Since Rangers didn't have any interrupt abilities like a Bash, they had to rely on fast hitting weapons to do it and their items were itemized that way. The Ranger only whip from the planes was one of the fastest items in game and if a Ranger was using it, it was extremely hard to get a cast off. The interrupt rate for Rangers on VZTZ was no where near where it was on live and part of the reason was the removal of physical push when a melee hit landed. On Live a caster would never sit there and try to channel a spell while being hit because it was nearly impossible against a dual wielding Ranger and they would quickly die yet on VZTZ standing still and channeling was ROUTINE and the vast majority of the time the caster would channel the spell even while getting hit the entire time they were casting........

The Ranger only Haste Cloak which I had on live was a clickable 50% haste. In Kunark my Ranger had self-buffed 90% haste with the fastest weapons in game. No caster on Vallon Zek tried to channel their spells through my melee or they died, very quickly.

Against melee's, Rangers had the speed advantage and for any good jouster that made the difference. The fact that Rangers could Heal, Nuke and toss up a damage shield meant they could easily beat any Melee one on one and if you always made sure to have the speed advantage you could always get away before you died if the battle was going against you. In my entire time on Vallon Zek from Pre-Kunark to mid-Velious (I gave away my account in Luclin) there were 5-6 classes that I never died to a single time, including Rogues, Necromancers and Druids and the main reason for it is simple, even if a rogue outjousted me they couldn't stop me from running away and all I had to do was quickly heal, track back to them and finish the job. As long as I maintained the speed advantage, there was nothing they could do.

However, how many people actually played Rangers before the Archery AA's? Pre-Kunark on Vallon Zek we only had what, 4 max level Rangers? Probably on all 3 PVP servers a total of 15 or so? Of those 15, how many were actually good at PVP? Maybe 2-3? So it's obvious why people think the class sucked when in reality they actually were the best pvp class for quite some time.

If these pvp servers would like to code the servers like the ORIGINAL pvp servers were coded and not take away pretty important details like melee interruption from pushing the characters and changing how MR works so that people had to joust where SoW was a big advantage as opposed to waiting on snares, roots, and stuns you would see that.

[Graym]

Another VZTZ Ranger nerf was Snare duration. It was a very effective way of dealing with pets because the Snare didn't wear off in the fight so it forced the Magician to deal with it as opposed to VZTZ where the snare would wear off the pet in very short order. This made pet classes in VZTZ quite a bit more powerful than they were supposed to be. Magicians were very easy kills for Rangers on live because of snare/ensnare and unlike players on Live where tracking occasionally bugged out, it NEVER bugged out on the pet so it was a 100% guarantee I could always find the Mage whenever I wanted.

It was also effective against heavily debuffed players in guild on guild pvp or if you ever stalemated someone who kept running, you could cast snare 100 times because if it lands ONCE it would last the full duration. The only class who could really take advantage of that was the Ranger because after if it landed the Ranger gets in melee and you can't dispell it. Most players would be forced to use pre-nerf pumice to get it off, so it didn't actually lead to a kill against them, but it did force them to strip their buffs to get it off. It was the only viable crowd control spell because Root would instantly wear off if it did manage to land on someone with high MR on Live although very few players on live ever bothered trying to Root because of how infrequently it landed. The reason it was worthwhile to cast snare was because regardless of how high your MR is if Snare miraculously landed it would not wear off, you either had to dispell it or die. Snares extremely long duration was a very HUGE advantage for Rangers on live servers that did not exist on VZTZ and while it usually only led to a full debuffing of a player because of egg-shaped pumices, it was always an extremely viable crowd control for pets.

Trueshot was also probably the best discipline in game against Casters. While nobody really got it until Kunark on Live, the Dark Cloak of the Sky (clickable 50% stackable haste, Ranger only) was a pre-Kunark item.

[Crenshinabon]

Anyone know if P99 or Red99 has pushback with melee?

[valithteezee]

Graym said what I couldn't. Although a lot of rangers power is POST classic, which is not what we are debating here, he proves some valid points. Rangers get those classic 5/17 whips which can interrupt a caster no problem. VTZT was very different from live.