Moorgard/dev's please play a ranger for a week!

[IsleWit]

I feel like im in catch22 situation. I make a specific call for you to come read this thread, which will most likely mean your going to ignore this thread. Sigh. Ok, I need to know whether rangers are going to be gimped for the forseeable future. Id rather just move on to someother game. I know Ill get one-stared by a few of you, but i work hard for my money and i want to not be so frustrated with playing. Yes i want to be the ranger that was described in the game manual, the one described as i choose the proffession in game. I dont feel like that, and dont think there is much to distinguish us from any other class.So i propose one of the higher up do the following. Make a ranger play for a day (combination solo/group) try playing a day at 20, a day at 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50. Thats 7 days right there. This ranger should have a misxture of yellow/orange coned eq. and a bit of money in the bank. If you can honestly tell me that rangers are a fun/viable class, ill not only stop complaning, I will be shouting your message from thread to thread, making sure others see the truth.However I doubt this will happens, here are some of the problems i see, and will be seeing in the future:-arrows to expensive (once makeshift arrow/rip are beyond use)-What con mob am i supposed to kill solo? I get my [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot] handed to me with grey mobs^ mobs. And i usually have to evac/run from blue (sometimes, not often green) solo mobs. This from someone who uses poison, and has some really descent armor and spell upgrades.-spell upgrades are hard to diffirentiate from what u have. Until purchased and used we have no idea whether it was worth spending x gold/silver to upgrade a skill/spell. Can we get a description of how much upgrade we should expect from an adept/appr book by examining it?-our utilities just plain suck. And you seem to be dragging your feet at fixing the ones that are sorely needed.-I didnt get to play pre-agi nerf a ranger so i dont know what i was missing, but [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot] can u give us some of that agi boost again. I feel like a pinata(sp?) breaking after two or three wacks.-shortening how close you need to be to use bow, its almost impossible to go to many zones and use ranged combat and not agro in group situations. And in solo your out of luck in many zones and your only going to use it once to three times before your done with it.-the damage described for our skills/spells and what we end up dont make sense.-give us the ability to use more of our bow skills on the move. You could make it so that if your on the move, your range is decrease, so this should avoid kiting.god, just listing the problems with rangers is making me depressed. Ill continues this post after i take some medication (liquour). Sigh.me not u

[IsleWit]

so easy to give one-star, but why not actually reply to the post. Ive raised several points that could be discussed. <img src="/smilies/2786c5c8e1a8be796fb2f726cca5a0fe.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Artr]

you are 28. Use survival instinct if you are getting beat around and pray for 33 when you get Adroit. Those skills keep you alive in battle. I can assure that pre-35 (as i am not that far yet) that you can solo some decent mobs using these skills and that undoing the agi nerf (again for pre-35) would be pointless and if it did help with those two skills you'd be unstopable. Where's the fun in that?

[Enoch100]

<DIV><EM>"-arrows are too expensive"</EM></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>True. Arrows will only get more expensive. And what will really drive you mad is to realize that your bow doesn't outdamage other classes (even those that are not specifically DPS-based) and yet you have to pay for it.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><EM>"-What con mob am i supposed to kill solo? I get my [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot] handed to me with grey mobs^ mobs. And i usually have to evac/run from blue (sometimes, not often green) solo mobs. This from someone who uses poison, and has some really descent armor and spell upgrades."</EM></DIV> <DIV><EM></EM> </DIV> <DIV>Hmm... Not totally in agreement. For example, at lvl 28 or 30 or somewhere near there... I was soloing White and Yellow Solo Orc Grunts in Zek (near the entrance). It was not really that difficult, especially with a good poison (I prefer Sting of Night or Venemous Touch at that level). Without the poison (which, btw, costs money) I would not be able to do it. Usually, I have to do a form of kiting where I pummel the crap out of the target with Sniping Shot (which works while moving), Triple Shot (which works while moving), Flaming Shot (which works while moving), stopping for a second and hitting Wounding Arrow. By this time, they are close to me. With all of the poison procs and bow damage, the mob usually is in the orange (2 bubbles of health remaining).</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><EM>"-our utilities just plain suck. And you seem to be dragging your feet at fixing the ones that are sorely needed."</EM></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>We have utilities? Can you point one out to me? Or are you referring to the basic scout abilities that all scouts have? Yes, I agree, they are dragging their feet on a lot of our abilities (hidden shot and some other bow abilities).</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><EM>"-the damage described for our skills/spells and what we end up dont make sense."</EM></DIV> <DIV><EM></EM> </DIV> <DIV>That is so true. I think that if you were hitting a gray mob with no AC or resistances, by surprise, unprepared, from the rear, you <STRONG>might</STRONG> do the damage range of what our abilities say. But I doubt it.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><EM>"you are 28. Use survival instinct if you are getting beat around and pray for 33 when you get Adroit. Those skills keep you alive in battle."</EM></DIV> <DIV><EM></EM> </DIV> <DIV>I honestly don't think I've ever used these abilities. Never found a need for them. I don't even know if they are in my hotbar anywhere... *shrug*</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>My biggest complaint about the Ranger class is this:</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>For a class that is suppose to be a DPS class, which we are considered to be considering we do not have heals, buffs, or any other utility spell specific to our class (Ranger), why is our overall damage and DPS comparable, if not lower, then other classes that receive more utility or are not necessarily considered a DPS class, when our DPS costs us money on an ungoing basis?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I can pump out damage. I really can. When I need to, I can pump out gobs of damage by sacrificing gobs of power and some arrows (and aggro). At 33, my typical "power-burn" for damage consists of:</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> <DIV>Wounding Arrow</DIV></DIV> <DIV>Sniping Shot</DIV> <DIV>Triple Shot</DIV> <DIV>Move in close after wounding arrow hitting Leaping Cut (which is ranged)</DIV> <DIV>Corner</DIV> <DIV>Lunging Thrust</DIV> <DIV>Shrouded Strike (which I think is now Pouncing Attack)</DIV> <DIV>Shadowflame (which is the racial trait version that does a DoT as well)</DIV> <DIV>Shadow (for two reasons, stealth and aggro loss)</DIV> <DIV>Shadow Lunge</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>By this point, not counting poisons (which typically constitutes 20% of my overall damage), I have done 1625 (on average) points of damage while consuming 412 power and 5 arrows. Now, I have 1370 power total... so a 1/3 of my power to do this. What's worse is that I am now stuck at doing Lightning Strike and Shrouded Strike/Shadowflame combos because every ability I just used will take a long time to reset.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The problem is that classes not specifically marked DPS as well as other more utility-based classes can eventually catch up to my damage and outdo me after this initial volley until about a minute or so into the fight at which point I can redo the entire volley (but by then I am so drained on power that some abilities will not make it).</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>*shrug*</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Anyway, just thought I'd throw some stuff into the mix. Do I think Rangers are broken? Yes. Do I think SOE can fix it? Maybe. Do I know how SOE can fix it? Not really. Do I think SOE will fix it soon? Probably not. Hence why I've started looking for another game while starting alts as a Coercer and Dirge.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>- Naissur, Neriak Server, Venkee Enterprises</DIV>

[Rahmn]

<DIV>35 ranger here, I really don't have anything to complain about.  I can solo yellow individual mobs in Enchanted Lands and Zek, I regularly grab agro from tanking Zerkers a couple of levels above me and I even tanked a few evil eyes in Runnyeye with only one healer in group.  Most of my equipment is orange or yellow and I usually make 1-2gp a day adventuring and selling vendor junk.  Life is pretty good for this ranger.</DIV> <DIV>Vertigo 35 Ranger</DIV> <DIV>Everfrost Server</DIV>

[skylancer]

<DIV>Wait till you hit 40, see if u are still having fun.</DIV> <DIV>Green no arrow mobs in RV will spank you like a red-headed stepchild.</DIV> <DIV>I used to have a lot of people send me tells for grps b4 40 after my guildies logged late-</DIV> <DIV>But we are worthless at higher lvls.</DIV> <DIV>Bruisers, monks, palladins.... all out dps us and have much higher utility.</DIV> <DIV>Everybody and his twin gets escape at higher lvls.</DIV> <DIV>We have no party buffs, and our debuffs dont work, not a one.</DIV> <DIV>"leg shot" supposed to slow a mob by 35% does NOTHING.</DIV> <DIV>I shot 1 out of a group of 2 for extent of longbow range.. both got to me at the same time... actually the one i shot had btr pathing and got to me a little sooner.</DIV>

[IsleWit]

dinged 30 last night. Remarkable change. I went from doing worse DPS than a Dirge (2lvls higher), a troub (3 lvls lower), and a swash (1lvl lower), to keeping up with the dirge and depending on how good i was to outdoing the dirges dps and also blowing past the troub and swash.So for some reason 20-29 sucks for rangers. Currently 30 is seeing some great change in dps.Quick question if i upgrade Rip will it give me more feyiron arrows per use?

[Rolar]

<DIV>It could be this simple. i, a 26 ranger was fighting Crabs in Nek for EL quest. I grouped with ANOTHER ranger, SAME level. immediately it was apparant that his defense sucked as his life went down rapidly...so much that i had to start taunting to save him.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>i inspected him and discovered that he had not upgraded ANY of his "right side" accessories (neck, waist,wrist, ect) while mine were all orange to me.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>check those pieces...it made a big difference for me...and him.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>im 26 and its not sucking for me.</DIV>

[IsleWit]

most if not all orange equip. a things need to be upgraded but i was waiting for 30 to get all the cool stuff. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[stainremov]

survival instinct and adroit are definitely skills you should use when soloing. when you solo, you use mostly ca's anyways, so your attack rate doesn't really matter. if you keep them upgraded, you will see a dramatic increase in soloability. a parry +5 or so gives you the parry ability of +1 lvl, which can make a big difference (if it didn't, why would we even level lol).and yeah, i can vouch for soloing the zek orcs. i was soloing them last night for xp (lvls 30 and 31).

[Zemeckis]

<DIV>Another thing I wish they'd do with rangers is let us use our arrow abilities at a closer range.  Some events that you have to do or some areas that you xp doesn't give you enough range to pull back and bow.  For example, the ring event in CT for the Heart of Fear quest is a very small area you have to stay in and if you have a stupid tank doing it theres no way to pull a bow attack off.  Just another request from yet another ranger that wont get any attention from the devs.  </DIV>

[Tr]

In AD&D based games, you can fire a bow point blank with just a slight decrease in defense. There's no reason why we should have to be a certain distance, and since our archery attacks are supposed to make up for the rest of the scouts damage abilities, they don't have a range disadvantage and we shouldn't either.

[Do]

<DIV>As a Lvl 50 Ranger we are useless... Plain and Simple </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>At this level we aren't need for our escape and thats about the only thing we can offer at this time.  Our class does next to no DPS and our own personal buffs are low, run on a long timer, and don't lost very long.  Our high end skills are still broke after being stated they were fixed.  So congratulations Everquest 2 Development team you managed to put out yet another garbage patch.  Oh and btw how has WoW been?  You guys reached lvl 60 yet because hopefully you will soon that way you can actually fix the game your supposed to be devloping.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Dohh</DIV>

[IsleWit]

Currently at 39.5 a few things ive noticed. It alot more fun playing ranger in the high 30's, we do a bit more damage comparitevely speaking than i did in my late 20, low 30s. A few things still bother me about our class, but at least now im enjoying myself again. Id like to note that we have WAY TOO MANY skills that when upgrade do nothing more than add to the power cost. Ive only found a few things that are worth upgrading at all. <div></div>

[Velocidad]

<P>At 39.5 your about to hit that magical spot where you get the next tier of poisons. And then for the time that you fight mobs under lvl 45 you'll do decent dps. That puts you around level 43, now your poisons are less effective = major dps drop. Personally I feel every Ranger under level 40 should be using player made poisons. Most are 1-200 skill which puts you at level 40, then use a mix of player made and store bought until you stop fighting mobs under lvl 45. From there use player made for the off chance that it actually lands it will do more damage than store stuff. </P> <P>We need some 250 poisons and some kind of dual wield blunt weapons. As an exchange for the blunts give Monks/Bruisers some kind of piercing or slashing weapons.</P>