Return Of The King (ranger)

[Aadill]

Yeah but I can't wait to do 50-60 on P99. The first 50 were fantastic.

[YendorLootmonkey]

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

and many of the ranger-specific weapons have procs that make them a liability: root, slow, high-aggro stun nukes etc.

The Ebony Bladed Swords have NEVER been a liability for me. In fact, groups with warrior tanks love them. Now, I wouldn't go equipping them to fight red cons where I'm going to draw a bunch of resist aggro, but I would expect any decent ranger to know that and have backup weapons. Again, it's more about the player than the class...

Having said all that, no idea why we are stuck with a 40% XP penalty. I like being able to function in multiple capacities (DPS, crowd control, puller, buffs/spot heals, emergency food/water forager, etc) in a group as the situation changes, but not being able to be the master of any one particular role and being stuck as the game's "MacGyver" class isn't worth that penalty, when you've got Enchanters/Mages/Necros pretty much soloing on EZ mode with little to no penalty... :P

On the other hand, I like having a low ranger population count. Because when you see a level 50 (or level 60 in Kunark) ranger, you know they've been through a lot, they can play the fuckin' game, and they're bad-ass players. Or mind-bogglingly retarded because a smart person would have quit by level 30 and went and rolled a solo class to farm phat lewts. It's one extreme or the other, really. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Dantes]

Yeah, Ebony Bladed Swords make everyone's job easier. They aren't a liability because you just put the meat shield closest to the mob. And if you don't have a tank, then your group sucks anyway. Your ranger can be like the canary in a coal mine. He dies = you gate. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Noselacri]

Proccing root is bad because it's a relatively high aggro spell and you'll have no control over it. If you really want to use root to help the tank, you're better off casting it. With two weapons that proc root, you can and will proc it multiple times in a row and then have it break and end up tanking. It also makes the weapon useless for things like aggro kiting and mob positioning, and if you still have them by the time you start raiding, the proc amounts to nothing but a mini enraging blow on a DPS class. You're better off getting a Short Sword of Morin and a Dragoon Dirk.

Anyway, the point is that many of the ranger-specific weapons have iffy procs on them. Ebon Bladed Sword is the vanilla high-end tradeable ranger weapon, and it turns out to have a proc that severely limits its use. The PoF axe's proc is a stun, the last thing you want as DPS. Even their main-hand epic procs a slow, and while slow procs can definitely be useful, they should come from specialized weapons like Swarmcaller and Truncheon of Doom, not the weapon you'll want to be using in all situations. It's just really dumb that the three primary gear waypoints - top-level dungeon, plane raid, and Kunark epic - all have procs that will often work against the ranger and can easily make the weapon worse than if it didn't have that proc. It's one of the countless design flaws of the class, and one of the main reasons for all those lovely "ranger down" jokes.

[YendorLootmonkey]

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

Proccing root is bad because it's a relatively high aggro spell and you'll have no control over it. If you really want to use root to help the tank, you're better off casting it. With two weapons that proc root, you can and will proc it multiple times in a row and then have it break and end up tanking.

As someone who has actually used dual EBS's from 25 to 40, I have never had any problem with them. Rarely have the mob turn on me once root breaks. Rarely. Even after a string of 4 procs in 30 seconds. If it does happen to turn on me... I cast root and step back. Problem solved. Small price to pay for very useful weapons.

Also very useful for soloing, not only because the direct damage, but because you can back off after it procs and heal yourself if needed without having to try to channel your own root and use up mana on casting the spell yourself.

I carry a SSOM/Silvery War Axe for times when the mobs are too high level or too MR to avoid resists.

To your other points, I never had an Earthcaller proc on live turn a mob on me... and by that time I had Jolt/Cinder Jolt anyway.

[jeffd]

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

the server is short of tanks.

given the massive amounts of twinked-out SKs and paladins hanging out in the EC tunnel lately, the reverse will probably be the case soon.

[Noselacri]

You have to admit that there's something odd about almost every single one of the iconic ranger weapons through vanilla and Kunark having procs that are decidedly anti-DPS. A root proc might have been interesting for a class that can't spam-cast it at will. These are the kinds of things that should be on specialized weapons, like Swarmcaller, not on the weapons that are supposed to be the main milestones in your career.

Anyway, anecdotal evidence is fun, so here's mine: I played a ranger twice, once as my very first character up to level thirty-something eleven years ago and then as my main from Luclin to GoD.

In the former case, I did get two EBS and had just as much trouble as I had benefit of them. If root doesn't cause significant aggro here, that's a quirk of the server, because proccing root half a dozen times throughout a fight should certainly earn you aggro on par with what a warrior without extremely good gear produces. Until they get their SSoYs (or if they were smart enough to use Obs Shard, which wasn't widely considered a tank weapon back then) you absolutely would out-aggro a warrior with two EBS, and then you had to keep the mob rooted. It's a weapon with possible benefits, not something you should rely on as your primary all-purpose weapon, and that means the top-level dungeon ranger weapon is a situational tool rather than something to aspire for. It's not as if you're much better off with a pair of yaks, either.

The second time around, I did my epics even though it was Luclin by then, and I don't know how you can possibly claim that you never got aggro from your slow-proccing main hand weapon. That's absurd. Unless you only ever grouped with endgame warriors and always made sure to engage mobs after a safety delay and bla bla, all those things that certainly will reduce the risk but also kind of suck to have to do due to your class-defining item. I'm thinking you want your class to look a bit better than it really is, and will blindly defend any presented shortcoming and flaw to the point of silliness. Everyone knows that slow is pretty much the highest aggro spell type in the game, and the Earthcall proc does not have inherently reduced aggro. It was a commonly accepted fact that the ranger epics provided an excellent off-hand and a situational slow tool (that a common drop from KC did just as well), making it the only class whose epic wasn't a "for life" staple (until replaced in later expansions, of course). I certainly went out of my way to sidegrade my main-hand to something with a similar ratio and without a potentially crippling proc as soon as I could. To say that the slow proc won't cause problems is false or ignorant. Basic knowledge of game mechanics and a clearer memory would bring us closer to the truth; and Jolt isn't in the game until Velious, anyway.

[RKromwell]

Jolt came out during RoK. It was a level 55 spell. During SoV they added Cinder Jolt at 55 and moved Jolt down to 51.

[Sparkin]

Root isn't a very high aggro spell, so if you had aggro problems with the proc I'd guess they were moreso from the damage. But yeah, up to level 30 isn't a great sample size. Nobody used EBS's back in original anyways because snare broke root and no snare made trains.

Anyways, the ebony sword isn't the top ranger dungeon-obtainable weapon, nor is the Yak. Its the EBW, which has no aggro proc.

Earthcaller proc had some aggro issues, but it wasn't nearly as bad as you're making it out to be (not that you'd know well starting a ranger in Luclin.) Most rangers used their epic main 95% of the time from Kunark to Velious until they got primal or better to replace it. I mostly considered the proc a boon in exp groups cause if you landed the proc you could tank any exp mobs anyways until the tank got aggro back (if you even drew aggro in the first place). Thats assuming I wasn't tanking anyways for the exp group which I did often.

It wasn't preferable for raiding cause yeah it could draw you unwanted aggro on a boss once in a while. But raiding wasn't that big a part of the game back then anyways, so it wasn't a big deal. If you were willing to accept the fact that the proc might get you killed on a raid very rarely, you'd have seen that it was actually useful even on raids. There were rare times when shamans had trouble landing slow on bosses where rangers managed to get earthcall procs on. That's more useful than any amount of dps you could do (within reason).

Overall, the ranger epic was easily one of the best. Both weapons were used much longer than those of most other classes. I situationally used EC until like the 10th or 11th expansion when I finally quit for good.

[Cyph]

The XP penalty is something I never really understood the purpose of, not for classes anyway. Regarding the lack of tanks on the server, I've noticed that too, as I usually end up tanking for the group (let's hope this isn't the case later on [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.])