Best solo melee class?

[Cecily]

So you suggest spending 8 seconds on an incoming mob to get agro similar to 10 mana? Yeah that sounds awful. Stop giving advice.

And apologies, I thought shield was 3.5 second. Guess that's more reason to not use it. Thanks. You did teach me something.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

So you suggest spending 8 seconds on an incoming mob to get agro similar to 10 mana? Yeah that sounds awful. Stop giving advice.

And apologies, I thought shield was 3.5 second. Guess that's more reason to not use it. Thanks. You did teach me something.

You leveled 3 Rangers to 60 and you are still spamming flame lick until you run out of mana. Yes, 8 seconds of cast time for 0 mana while the mob is coming into camp is going to be better than you spamming flame lick into OOM.

I never said you shouldn't use Woushi shield if you have one lol. You really need to read.

Think about it this way. If you click your shield 60 times an hour instead of 60 Flame Licks, you would save 600 mana per hour. That is the same amount of mana as wearing a Flowing Thought I item. It's a good way to make up for the lack of Flowing Thought items a Ranger has access to.

[Jimjam]

Unlike the BE gloves/boots which I have found rather useful on my SK, I never found Tolan's gloves to get amazing use on my ranger... honestly I'd rather have the extra slot to loot another fine steel sword [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]. Even when mucking about in KC they'd barely get any use when looted as primarily a cash item.

Anyways, considering the context of the thread is best solo power, free snare isn't terribly useful, especially as if you are soloing it is pretty easy to quickly catch a med tick and recoup mana spent on casting a snare properly. Soloing an ice burrower is a fun one time thing for a ranger to do when they have a spare hour or so. It is useful there as landing snare without a druid epic is pretty arduous, and by fighting an ice burrower with a ranger you've already committed to being pretty time intensive... I can't remember if you have time to land the snare cast on an unsnared IB, or if you have to start preresnaring before the current one fades. Definitely there must be some kind of 'usecase' there? But honestly, just finding half a second to catch a med tick feels better.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

Unlike the BE gloves/boots which I have found rather useful on my SK, I never found Tolan's gloves to get amazing use on my ranger... honestly I'd rather have the extra slot to loot another fine steel sword [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]. Even when mucking about in KC they'd barely get any use when looted as primarily a cash item.

Anyways, considering the context of the thread is best solo power, free snare isn't terribly useful, especially as if you are soloing it is pretty easy to quickly catch a med tick and recoup mana spent on casting a snare properly. Soloing an ice burrower is a fun one time thing for a ranger to do when they have a spare hour or so. It is useful there as landing snare without a druid epic is pretty arduous, and by fighting an ice burrower with a ranger you've already committed to being pretty time intensive... I can't remember if you have time to land the snare cast on an unsnared IB, or if you have to start preresnaring before the current one fades. Definitely there must be some kind of 'usecase' there? But honestly, just finding half a second to catch a med tick feels better.

The specific context is Cecily is saying they are going OOM. This means they need to save mana somehow.

You are correct that sitting for a tick will recover the 15 mana spent on snare. However, the cast time on the snare clickies are only 4 seconds.

This means you can save the 15 mana and catch the full meditation tick if you start casting the clickie snare after a server tick. You get the snare and 20 mana instead of the snare and 5 mana. You are effectively gaining 15 mana per snare this way.

[Cecily]

So I have 2300 mana. Flame lick costs 10. I cast it twice per mob. That's 20 mana. That's 115 mobs. Say 45 seconds a kill. That's 86 mins of uptime, not including passive mana regen. Snaggles ranger with 1600 mana gets 60 mins of uptime only spending mana on flame licks. It's not an issue that needs to be solved with Tolan's gloves. The mana just runs out eventually. It's ok. That's an example of how more mana not run out faster. Thank you for weighing in.

Your suggestion of saving 600 mana an hour with gloves clicks equates to 4 mins per hour of glove casting. No. That's pure aids.

Anyways this was just an aside about how originally I was arguing more mana isn't a bad thing and this is a group example, so not really relevant to the thread... Nor is the ranger class in general. They're great soloers, but the answer is monk and everyone knows it.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

So I have 2300 mana. Flame lick costs 10. I cast it twice per mob. That's 20 mana. That's 115 mobs. Say 45 seconds a kill. That's 86 mins of uptime, not including passive mana regen. Snaggles ranger with 1600 mana gets 60 mins of uptime only spending mana on flame licks. It's not an issue that needs to be solved with Tolan's gloves. The mana just runs out eventually. It's ok. That's an example of how more mana not run out faster. Thank you for weighing in.

Your suggestion of saving 600 mana an hour with gloves clicks equates to 4 mins per hour of glove casting. No. That's pure aids.

Anyways this was just an aside about how originally I was arguing more mana isn't a bad thing and this is a group example, so not really relevant to the thread... Nor is the ranger class in general. They're great soloers, but the answer is monk and everyone knows it.

If you only need to cast flame lick twice per mob, you will have infinite up time by simply meditating for 1 tick per mob. This could be done while a new mob is coming into camp, or the existing mob is fleeing. If your group's healer isn't struggling with mana, you could even do it mid combat and eat the bit of extra damage.

Snaggle's Ranger will have infinite up time in the same scenario with 700 less max mana using the strategy above.

You can also use a snare clickie at max casting range while the mob is coming into camp to have it switch agro from the puller to yourself. Then you only need to spend mana on flame lick if you lose agro, rather than always casting 2x flame lick even when you may not need to.

If you pair the snare clicky on incoming mobs with occasional meditation ticks, you'll get even more mana.

[Cecily]

Oh ok thanks

[Duik]

I can see how having more mana is a good thing, but im an aussie so everything you guys do is upside down anyways.
Am i correct in assuming if Cecily (frigsample) has total 2300mana, is currently at 1725 (75%) and needs to drop a few 0 stat sv items into slots that have + mana and/or wis. Say a total of 200 mana from 4 items.
So a new total of 1525 (out of a possible 2100), does the percent mana goes up, to make it look like they have more mana.
This would appear to open up more options.
But chasing more mana is silly. Sorry i forgot.

[Goregasmic]

Ranger mana pool gets chipped away at. With limited regen options and often little time to sit, more mana means more uptime, regardless of clickies, regardless of starting full or not. 80% of 2400mana is still more than 80% of 1800.

Bcbrown ranger's magelo is more or less EC BIS, leaning on the sturdier side. Yeah it is hard to get more mana on a EC beat but if you want more there are options. Melees get the 12mana/wis treatment too and you'll pretty much always be under the 200wis softcap so it is good returns. Yeah, you'll have to sacrifice some stats but depending on the task at hand it might not matter much. If you have the "luxury" of raiding gear it is even easier.

Sidenote: when I started chanter, almost everybody told me mana doesn't matter because you have high regen but even with +14 mana regen is always an issue. Different class with different struggles but a bigger pool is a bigger pool.

[Duik]

Yep agreed Gore.
More is more. No matter how you cut it.

I was trying to make the point that there is always more than one way to skin the cat. Clickies for various spells may work, who knows.
On an unrelated note, its a pity the two best mana rechargers, bard and chanter are so strong solo cuz virtually any duo/trio with (underpowered) bard or chanter would really encourage grouping. NVM.