Are rangers worthless?

[Thulack]

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

ya man first toon i tried to make was halfing ranger [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] too bad we will never reach that timeline because i think it was after velious

Yep [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

------------------------------
March 19, 2002
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- Halflings and Gnomes have new classes available to them: Halfling
Rangers and Paladins as well as Gnome ShadowKnights and Paladins. All
of the necessary NPCs and items should be available for these new
classes.


Maybe after velious this could be one of the custom changes the dev's make. /hint /hint [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Dark Team]

There are probably a couple halfling rangers running around blue :P

I really, really hope that they allow the new short team hybrids eventually...

[kotton05]

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

why is nobody talking about the ridiculously large track distance of rangers?

Rangers forever tracking raid mobs across the zone....
no mob should never not be snared with a ranger around....
Spirit of wolf on a melee....
Snap aggro with flamelick....(saving a caster)

what kinda question is this? seems not thought out..... being a ranger youll get jokes made as a DT eater, but most the time you have a role. I forever see the player not the class tho...

[Grimmly Fireforge]

Rangers are probably my favorite class in EQ but discrimination on them here makes it inevitable that you will "give up" and reroll.

I got my Ranger to level 40s before I quit. I remember sitting in Dreadlands for like 7 hours with LFG my tag on. In front of me stood three groups, each with openings/LFM. I was shouting LFG every once in a while for the entire time. All declined to invite me not because I'm a bad player or have a bad rep, but because nobody wants a Ranger.

It was that exact moment I camped out and rerolled.

[Itap]

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

Rangers are probably my favorite class in EQ but discrimination on them here makes it inevitable that you will "give up" and reroll.

I got my Ranger to level 40s before I quit. I remember sitting in Dreadlands for like 7 hours with LFG my tag on. In front of me stood three groups, each with openings/LFM. I was shouting LFG every once in a while for the entire time. All declined to invite me not because I'm a bad player or have a bad rep, but because nobody wants a Ranger.

It was that exact moment I camped out and rerolled.

Honestly made me sad. Should have made friends with a necro

[tekniq]

p99 needs rangers. who else is going to sit there for hours at a time hitting the 'Track' button until mob X spawns, where then you can jump out of your seat and type " MOB X POP, MOB X POP!!!!!!" in your guild chat and frantically run to zerg a mob down...oh wait, druids can do that too and they can port -_-

[TWDL_Prexus]

Rangers are far from worthless. However besides track theres nothing else they do better then any other class.

[stormlord]

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

This.

This is what makes people play a ranger. You will never become bored with a ranger because you have the opportunity to "change jobs" very quickly depending on what is required.

That's what makes rangers fun.

I started a ranger in 1999 and 2001 and played it off/on until 2010. I created a few alts here and there but they never got past ~30, except for the paladin, but the paladin was a later creation.

My ranger on live got to 85 with 1200+ aa.

My ranger in 1999 had 13+ days /played. Never played that ranger after 1999 (different server).

The problem is that in groups the versatility of a ranger is greatly diminished because more specialized classes take on those roles. This, in combination with changes to EQ at the higher levels over the course of a year, is what led the EQ developers to remove the penalties on hybrids. If you want, you can read about it here:
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/edit...rs_letter.html

(deeper review... they added an experience penalty pre-release because in order to keep rangers competitive somewhat in groups they had to beef up their skills/stats while also giving them extra versatility, otherwise they'd have to take too much from one area to feed it into another. what i'm saying here is they took from dps and tanking (and other primary skills/stats) and put that in snaring and rooting and healing and dotting and dding and archery and buffs and so on, but they couldn't take out too much or rangers would be severely non-competitive in groups. so to avoid cutting back too much on dps and tanking they added an experience penalty. however, an experience penalty doesn't work as a balancing mechanism when everyone is capped. additionally, they made changes to the game at the upper levels that evened out the classes. lastly, the experience penalty was making it impossible for hybrids to level alongside friends at a similar rate. what they did was remodel the game so classes are balanced and obsoleted experience penalties as a counterweight. note that they kept the smaller experience penalties at first, but they later removed them in the years after.)

One issue is that the generic classes were not as versatile (is true even much later in EQ's evolution). As a result, they're not as fun, especially solo. Additionally, most classes are not fun in groups because their roles are so specific. As a ranger in a solo situation, I had to use most of my skills. However, in a group I would often be stuck in a dps role and we'd camp one spot for hours. Only the fact that I had a group of people to talk to and the occasional disaster was my interest kept intact. I'll admit that when I was solo I often wished for company because there's nothing worse than doing the same ol' solo-route you've been doing for a month.

The worst thing about classic EQ is its camping because it leads to so many other problems. The repetitiveness of group and solo play could have been reduced if camping was less effective, for instance.

I've tried to play warriors and rogues and other classes. But I inevitably find that they're too specific. There's just not enough break. It's not fun to do the same thing over and over.

Bottom line, a warrior is tank and spank. That's boring. A ranger can tank and spank too, but they can also snare and kite with dots/dd's and bow/arrow. Using root, they can better handle an add. If they get into a bad pull, they can snare/root and run for the zone line. If they're lost, they can track and use that information to locate their destination. Warriors can use bandages, but so can rangers. And rangers can also heal and they can do all this while in-combat by rooting/snaring. I could go on and on how a warrior is very boring.

Increasing HP/DPS is not the way to make a warrior or generic class fun. That's easy-mode. Lots of "modern" mmorpgs make that mistake. The key to making fun gameplay is diversity and consequences.

What I'm trying to say is that versatility is FUN. Versatility doesn't mean pressing a win button or leveling without challenge, it means having lots of tools and having to be wise about when you use them.

Not all "generic" classes in EQ were necessarily boring. The warrior is just an extreme example of how things can get too boring. The enchanter can be a very exciting class to play in the right situations, for example.

[Silo69]

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

What a stupid question.

Perhaps you meant, are rangers not really worth playing in comparison to xxx?

Rangers are great, now fuck off!

/thread

[purist 4.0]

stormlord you know nobody reads your long-winded posts right?