Lets talk about Rangers

[YendorLootmonkey]

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

I was going to start a ranger today.. i did have a question though, as far as i remember when eq came out rangers were HORRIIBLE... to the point as a druid healer i wouldn't let them in my groups, they would pull huge agro.. then die instantly and get me dead[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] After awhile sony pathed up rangers and made them amazing, which flavor of ranger is in this server?

Actually, rangers were pretty badass in classic... everyone likes to forget that.

Then Kunark came out and mobs started to hit harder, we got faster weapons and warriors couldn't taunt the higher level mobs well, so we tended to draw aggro more and didn't have the damage mitigation to handle it. This led to Sony/Verant adding the Jolt spell so we could manage our aggro better.

Right now, aside from being a fun class to play because of the versatility, the main issues with rangers is that everyone knows we have the 40% hybrid XP penalty which we indirectly share with our groups. Couple that with the relatively high number of min-maxers on this server, and it becomes difficult to justify adding a ranger to the group:

- you want DPS? Get a rogue or a monk. The monk can also FD split/pull.
- you want a tank? Get a warrior/SK/pally, they're less of a mana drain on the healers and with higher HP, make CHs more efficient
- you want crowd control? Get an enchanter or a bard, they can also slow mobs and haste everyone.
- you want tracking? Get a druid, they can nuke and backup heal.

There's very little compelling reason to add a ranger to a group, unless you have a smallish group and you need that ranger to switch between roles as needed. So you end up having to work a lot harder to prove your worth to the group... chain-pulling (esp. in an outdoors dungeon/zone), rootparking, positioning mobs, ripping mobs off the casters, harmonying down to that named mob and pulling it back solo with an arrow before that pesky druid can reach it, pulling out Swarmcaller (or in some cases, soon Earthcaller) to slow a mob that's beating the shit out of your group, etc.

Rangers become a bit more useful in Velious with some unique ATK buffs and the Trueshot and Weaponshield discs, from a raiding perspective. But by then, we get Panic Animal and you can probably solo to 60 with that without relying on getting groups.