Ranger Bow Killing

[fadetree]

Fleeting quiver is 20% haste....quiver haste is weight reduction/3.
WolfsongReborn, your experience is the common one. If you are geared like sedrie above, then yeah of course you'll 'mow things down'.
Get a fleeting quiver (you can do it yourself except for the thickened mana and maybe the tailoring combine). Get your dex up. Get decent item haste. Get a good bow, one of the velium ones is pretty good and not too expensive. Make or buy or click bracer for a shit ton of arrows. Then, if you like killing dblues in about 15 minutes each (stuff when you are 52), go for it. When you hit Trueshot, you can do some decent damage, but otherwise it's pretty slow.

[Ocelo]

I can speak from experience, I'm also in Ivory's guild <Archer's Vow>.

Bow-soloing is actually pretty easy and also a very safe and consistent way to grind xp as a Ranger. It is "slow" in the sense that it takes a while to drop a mob with arrows and dots while it's rooted, but it's also pretty safe. That means it's also possible to take down large monsters that would normally wreck a ranger in melee. Think Hill Giants and large stuff in the high 30's. I bow-soloed Hill Giants for xp and cash in the Karanas during the 30's and 40's and it worked out reasonably well with a decent profit turned in the process. That extra cash allowed me to buy better weapons, bows and armor. There is a fletcher in East Karana, so that helped me keep my arrows stocked up while hunting. That is key, since without the Tolan's Darkwood Bracer, arrows dry up quickly while bow-soloing.

Now that my ranger is 51, I've bow-soloed in the Dreadlands and Emerald Jungle with the Tolan's Darkwood Bracer for arrows. I'm currently using the Bow of the Huntsman, Hangman's Noose and Fleeting Quiver. I also posess Raincaller and a Velium Recurve Bow. It's debatable if the Velium Bow is better DPS than the Bow of the Huntsman because of the Proc (which Dex helps with). Again, this is a reasonably safe way to solo and grind xp, but it's not "quick". Think of your bow as another DoT spell.

I have high STR and high DEX and that seems to help both with hits and with crits. I'm not sure the damage is increased by either stat unless you count an increase in overall effectiveness and crit damage an increase.

Halfdane - 51 Ranger of <Archer's Vow>

[fadetree]

Yeah, thinking of it as a 'DoT' is a good analogy. It works, just kinda slow, and you need decent gear.

[Ivory]

Each mob dies a little slower than if you were meleeing....BUT you are able to rely more on spells (since you can meditate between shots) and have no downtime (letting you keep hunting). Rangers get a lot of pretty good DD spells to use as they level (along with their dots)....most rangers in melee don't bother using them, but a soloing archer has PLENTY of mana to throw them around and the damage stacks up fast along with the constant plink of arrows.

That is what makes archery outshine other soloing classes. That is why a ranger with a skydarkener can out-quad a wizard or druid (or out-single kill a necromancer). In a race for a single mob, yea those other classes win.....but when leveling up over an hour, a ranger with a good bow wins.

But since you rely SO MUCH on your bow and there are so few good ones (a wind saber isn't a good bow btw , way too fast to let you cast / med between shots ....just eats your arrows)....it can mean the world between having something like a huntsmans bow and having a skydarkener at level 45.

Huntsman bow between 40-50 isn't anything that special. 20/30 stats (its ok) is still worse than a 30/38 velium bow since it isn't proccing yet. A skydarkener or windstriker though is WAY better because of the procs (really, I can't stress the power of bow procs enough. I've gotten 5 procs in a row on my skydarkener....that is close to 1k damage to each mob in a quad kite :P).

The difference in proc rates between 100 dex and 200 dex is double the proc rate. Even with a frequent 81dd from the huntsmans bow, it can be really decent.