What to twink? Wood Elf Ranger or Dark Elf Necro

[Jimjam]

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

I'm curious what experiences people have had with ranger tanks. A full set of Golden Leaf armor (160AC) is barely ahead of the Indicolite armor (155 AC) that Warriors were wearing in classic era and compares very poorly with Myrmidon armor (250 AC) although not so badly with Blood Lord's armor (188 AC). Evidently the dragons prefer warriors! The blocking skills aren't that far behind the real tanks, but the 200 cap on raw defense is brutal and rangers are on the 4 HP/STA table so Complete Heal gets much less efficient.

I can see this working well before 50 when defense starts to lag, or with a defensively oriented class setup, say a cleric with clarity and a shaman doing nothing but slow. But in a more balanced setup, say tank + MNK/CLR/ENC, can the ranger really hold up when not every NPC is slowed?

TLDR: it feels to me that the 'best of the worst' title is between Bard and Monk, with Ranger well behind.

There is so much AC gear available that any half geared melee is going to be at max mitigation against almost all XP content in the 50s. Even rangers with their terrible defence skill.

This doesn't completely disqualify Rangers from their 'bad tank' reputation; it's not actually their mitigation which causes them problems; it is their lower avoidance (due to their paltry defence skill) and their lower Max hp.

I.e a ranger isn't likely to be taking any more damage than any other melee on a per hit basis, the truth is they are just taking a larger number of hits and their low hp means each one of those hits represents a larger percentage of their health. This double drawback is what makes cheals so much more frequent compared to warriors/Knights/monks.

A ranger isn't completely adrift without a shaman; indeed they can potentially self haste and have a few sources of slow. On top of this from 55+ they get chloroplast (and skin like nature if you are rocking with a necromancer as healer) for regen.

All this said, at 60 a ranger can tank things like fungi king and Kael Arena so while they have their problems they are on the right side of adequate if no other tank is available.