most underpowered class in game?

[Zuranthium]

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

Weren't Rangers, and Hybrids in general, scorned vitriolically during Classic/Kunark?

Rangers were one of the most popular classes in 1999 (Paladin quite popular too), thanks to the inherent fantasy-genre fanbase and because of being nearly identical to Warriors in terms of melee capability, while having some useful spells and tracking on top of it. The hybrid exp penalty was also not really known at the time.

When Kunark came out they quickly went down the drain in reputation, because their melee capability (especially tanking) got a lot worse and they didn't gain anything special to compensate for it, and the hybrid exp penalty became more known to the playerbase. Their lacking melee capability was compounded by dual-wielding generating more aggro than 2-hand melee, and lots of people didn't understand how to use Root for proximity aggro, so Rangers were taking aggro despite doing less damage and then not being able to tank too well.

Also the first player to hit Level 60 was a Ranger (achieved by camping NPC's in South Qeynos) and went on the message boards talking about how weak the class was at that point.