Why does everyone hate rangers?

[Elmarnieh]

Originally Posted by Kich867 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I think rangers are a pretty cool class, and I was really looking forward to playing one, but after investigating how bow damage works, the experience penalty, their lower damage output than other melee classes, their inability to tank compared to other tanks, I genuinely don't see the point to playing one outside of novelty. Or to be a maverick, or because you genuinely just enjoy the way the class plays and min-maxing be damned.

And those are all fine reasons but the problem still is that very few of those comments are unique to rangers. A lot of these are, "Because I'm a ranger and not quite as good as everyone else at doing something I have to do this really roundabout thing to look useful". You can make those sound like separate actions, but almost all of those are tantamount to the fact that rangers just aren't tanks and they don't do particularly great damage and are awful at healing.

The rest of them are made to imply that the group is incompetent and somehow by being a well played ranger you fix all of that, which is a pretty loose road to travel down since you're predicating your usefulness on the stupidity of others. This makes your argument that rangers can only actually be useful if they are played to their fullest while the rest of the party is not.

I wouldn't ever turn someone down because they were a ranger, because quite frankly I don't care, but it's pretty hard to try and argue that rangers bring something unique to the table that merits their XP sink. For instance, a druid has no exp penalty and could satisfy better almost all the criteria you mentioned. They have better snares, roots, CC's in general, they offer better healing, and their damage output is pretty solid between the DoT's and Nukes they offer. They also offer substantially better buffs.

They cannot tank, but this is fine as rangers can't either (they can just not tank longer than druids can by a bit), and would resort to similar tactics to alleviate tank damage (probably snaring and rooting).

Like I said though, I wouldn't turn a ranger down--but if this thread is asking "Why does everyone hate rangers?" it's for the reasons listed: They have a 40% experience penalty while offering the worst of damage of the dps classes, the worst healing of the hybrid classes, the worst tanking of the hybrid classes, the weakest buffs of classes that can buff, and their only real benefit is that they simultaneously provide the worst of everything so that in the event you need them to, they can go full-blown gimp-healer, gimp-tank, or mediocre-dps.

I don't think we should really misinform people about the state of that class, they should know full well what they're getting into if they're interested in playing it. I was planning on making a ranger as my alt, but after reading all the material on this site and the wiki and other sites, but as a bit of a min-maxer I just can't find an applicable reason to do so.

The perks of playing a ranger however are: they get very cool weapons, despite how much they suck they also get critical hits with bows which are cool, I prefer the look of chain mail to plate, they get to turn into a wolf and fight bitches.

I've tanked plenty of things from Karnors to Sebilis to the planes. I've been MT on planar clears and in more groups in more camps than I can count.

In a lot of those situations the druid would be sub-optimal to a ranger. Say in peeling and root parking...sure they have the same spells but mana is their prime resource so every tic spent not medding when not at fm is a greater negative than a ranger. The ranger is also dramatically more resistant to damage while root parking. The ranger again when pulling can take a few hits on a multi-pull to root and snare and draw out the mobs coming into camp far more reliably than a druid. The druid should be dedicated to heal/dps in a group role.

While you can make an efficient group without a ranger a ranger is a great all around safety valve for when things get out of control. Unless we are in late luclin or PoP or the next two expansions there is no reason to think of using a ranger with a bow. We are melee until we are ranged and then we are mostly melee again. That's just how EQ rangers are. If you want to play a bow class - you don't want to play on P99.

If you want your character to be the best at something in the game by all means please play another class. If you want yourself to be the best at the game you can be then play a ranger.