Longbow Raid Strat

[Starwindz]

<DIV>So i do a lot of raiding with my ranger and have gotten pretty decent gears and master spells along the way, excluding the ever elusive T7 long bow. Currently my dps caps around 1.25k-1.3k. I've been doing a lot of switching between my Wurm destroyer bow and Raincaller during raids and I always end up with 2 questions at the end of the day. the first being which is going to be better dps the T6 long bow rain caller or the fabled t7 short bow. Second if I ever get my hands on the T7 long bow what's the proper way to use it to maximize dps. Should i just be shooting off the auto attacks in between CA's? Or should i be using focus aim going straight auto attack for a time?<EM>  </EM>Basically i would just like to have some idea on how i should go about using it. Thanks in advance for any info you can give me.</DIV><p>Message Edited by Starwindz on <span class=date_text>12-28-2006</span> <span class=time_text>11:34 PM</span>

[Judist]

<P>Longbows will always give better DPS to a ranger. A shortbow (expecially when your hasted) has its DR lowered everytime you use a CA because your delaying autoattacks. The "slower" longbows DR is not affected nearly as much or often.</P> <P>While a higher DR does means higher DPS, in order to maximize it you cant miss/delay 1 autoattack. And with the rangers haste buff a shortbow suffers alot. Its just too darn fast to mix in your CA's (ranged AND melee) without missing a beat.</P> <P>The hasted longbow however gives just enuf time for 1-2 properly timed CA's in-between shots. Almost perfect.</P> <P>As a bonus, slower weapons with high top-end damage will crit at a "compounded" rate. That's why many longbows can crit for 3k+ damage on an auto-attack. Personally I've had my Ghostly Bow of Bylze (T7 <U>treasured</U> bow) crit for 4k many times. You'll never get those numbers from the shortbow.</P> <P>Stick with the Raincaller, get haste, and learn to time autoattacks+rangedCA+meleeCA to maximize your DPS. And if you have a top-end melee weapon (Ex: Grinning Dirk of Horror) add yet another damage source to your list... melee autoattacks.</P> <P> </P> <P>BTW, this is why rangers are either great or horrible IMO. We have 4 areas to balance in order to make the top of the charts. This takes much more concentration to master than any other DPS class. Hands down, a ranger who knows how to use their class should be praised for doing so. Nothing else requires as much skill.</P> <P> </P>

[dazze]

<DIV>FYI its a myth that using a CA slows down or interrupts your aa. If you are casting triple volley for instance and you are due an aa, the aa will be seen to have hit at the same time as the ca. However the next aa will still fire when it was due, i.e. a few seconds after the previous aa was due, not as some would say after the ca had hit, which would result of course in a delay. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>You can actually see this happening, as you will cast a ca the highlighted numbers will show as normal but at the same time you will see the aa hit, however you just wont see the aa shooting animation.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The timing of an aa is simply down to having the ranged attack button pressed. If you have a 4 second delay on aa and are fighting for 80 seconds you will make 20 swings regardless of how many ca's you spam. The only delays you would get would be if you moved into stealth when the ranged attack button closes.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>If you dont beleive me next time your raiding a target, queue up all your ca's if you look at the parser you will still find you were firing aa.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The mechanic is the same for melleing classes.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>You can imagine what it would be like for swashies, assasins or brigs if each aa had to wait for a ca to finish. All these mellee classes have a large number of ca's and on raids usually spam them, if they had to w8 for each one to finish they wouldnt be hitting the mob much, especially considering there weps delays will be around 1 second.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The only time you should be concerned about interuppting your autoattack is if you decide to mellee the mob as well, as then you would have to time the melle attack/ca to be inbetween your ranged attack, as your rnaged button atomatically closes once you melle.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>But to be honest most top rangers do not bother to use mellee attacks in a raid situation, firstly it pisses the rl off as helears then have to worry about healing us and secondaly it makes a neglibible difference (if at all) to your dps. The only one worth doing is long shanks followed by the stealth attack (I cant remember the names).</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>If you want to do high dps concentrate on increasing your str, int and your ranged skill, and try and get in a grp with a dirge an inq a zerker and an illusionist. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>And unfortunatley you also need a fabled t7 longbow and t8 ammo (either bazkul or ichorstrand). Personally I use Bazkul as im not lucky enough for the Sarnak Warbow to have dropped. With bazkul you will crit up to 6/6.5 k and stupidly high numbers with the warbow, the longbow of corruption is even better but your gonna need to kill the Matron for it.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV><p>Message Edited by dazzerd on <span class=date_text>12-29-2006</span> <span class=time_text>04:44 AM</span>

[Sham07]

<div><blockquote><hr>dazzerd wrote:<div></div>The timing of an aa is simply down to having the ranged attack button pressed. If you have a 4 second delay on aa and are fighting for 80 seconds you will make 20 swings regardless of how many ca's you spam. The only delays you would get would be if you moved into stealth when the ranged attack button closes. <div> </div> <div>I</div><hr></blockquote>Following that logic you should get an automatic double attack if you, for example, use a shortbow while on good haste and fire RoA or after interrupts. The aas get queued while u use CA but they still get delayed until after the CA. If u queue a CA before your aa is in queue ull delay it even longerThat means: Fire one ca without queuing another will launch your aa after the caFire one ca and queue another immediately and your aa will launch after 2nd one whatever you queue after or in what speed because your aa will be queued by then as well. thats the reason why u still see autoattacks hit even when u spam CAs. but u dont wanna do that cuz it does delay your aa by a sigtnificant amount.    </div>

[Judist]

<DIV><FONT color=#ff3300>The timing of an aa is simply down to having the ranged attack button pressed. If you have a 4 second delay on aa and are fighting for 80 seconds you will make 20 swings regardless of how many ca's you spam. The only delays you would get would be if you moved into stealth when the ranged attack button closes.</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>CA's DO delay auto attacks regardless. Wait until an autoattack is about to fire an hit Rain of Arrows early. Nothing is fired "as" this CA is spooling up. I'm not making this up. You <STRONG>will</STRONG> lower a shortbows DR greatly with CA's over the duration of a raid encounter. This is what I mean by either great of bad rangers... not everyone understands the mechanics yet even at lvl70.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff3300>But to be honest most top rangers do not bother to use mellee attacks in a raid situation, firstly it pisses the rl off as helears then have to worry about healing us and secondaly it makes a neglibible difference (if at all) to your dps. The only one worth doing is long shanks followed by the stealth attack (I cant remember the names).</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Another silly statement. If anything, top-end rangers value every source of damage we have including melee. They become expecially useful if you have the proper weapons. It makes for a <STRONG>big</STRONG> difference and <STRONG>great</STRONG> rangers know this.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>For example, the GDoH (another slow, top-end weapon) can also crit for 3k+. If you have it, you may as well joust it during your melee CA's. It's like free a 1k hit with the possibility of a 3-4k crit. You DO need to be using your melee CA's expecially if your mastered.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>And when your melee CA's are expended, use "point-blank-shot" (AA) which will put you back into ranged auto.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff3300>firstly it pisses the rl off as helears then have to worry about healing us</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I have a 70 defiler (which has become my main) and our rangers who are in AoE range are never a burden. Then again we're all geared up and we balance groups for resists. If anything when they take too much damage they simply (gasp) back up and wait till their group healer throws them a bone.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>In closing, Oasis has some rangers that will drop your jaw. Unfortunatly my ranger isnt one because all my DKP when to my Defiler. Even so, with mastercrafted armor and a treasured longbow I'll exceed 1.2k DPS easilly using the above tactics + caustic poisons. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Point is, these <STRONG>great</STRONG> rangers on our server are masters of timing and use <STRONG>every</STRONG> available source of damage they have. And these select few are the ones that will exceed 2k DPS consistently. Not just because they have Sarnak+T8 ammo, but because they know the class.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV>

[Starness]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> BeatinGuts wrote:<BR> <DIV><FONT color=#ff3300>The timing of an aa is simply down to having the ranged attack button pressed. If you have a 4 second delay on aa and are fighting for 80 seconds you will make 20 swings regardless of how many ca's you spam. The only delays you would get would be if you moved into stealth when the ranged attack button closes.</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>CA's DO delay auto attacks regardless. Wait until an autoattack is about to fire an hit Rain of Arrows early. Nothing is fired "as" this CA is spooling up. I'm not making this up. You <STRONG>will</STRONG> lower a shortbows DR greatly with CA's over the duration of a raid encounter. This is what I mean by either great of bad rangers... not everyone understands the mechanics yet even at lvl70.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV><FONT color=#ff3300></FONT><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P><BR>This whole thing is really beaten to death and in the end is kinda moot. Back when Tobias roamed these forums him and I had a back and forth over this and agreed that in the end you can in theory waste as much DPS waiting for an AA to go off between CAs (i.e. CA finishes, you delay a second for an AA then hit your next CA leading to 1second of doing nothing) and you could delaying AA by a second because you hit a CA a second before the AA was to go off.</P> <P>In the end the best strategy I believe is to examine the cast timers of all your CAs and also use /weaponstats to figure out what your real delay (haste taken into account) on your AA is. Then line those CAs up in groups where their cast timers will add up to your delay. Once you've done that try to stick to the groups and make a Macro to start combat that uses /togglerangedattack (I think that's the right command) followed by a /useability line that triggers the first CA in one of your groups. You'll get an extra AA off right at the start (if you hit a CA to start combat the AA comes after the CA) then you should have your CAs synched (more or less) to your AA.</P> <P>It is always good to try to keep in mined your AA and not do things that are obviously bad (like start a stealth/snipers combo one second before your AA is going to trigger). In the end, do what works for you and don't be afraid to play with your routine. Mixing things up and seeing how they work for you will be the best way to improve your play. :smileyvery-happy:</P>

[Gerdos]

<DIV>A lot of good points, but BeatinGuts is right.  A developer posted about this mechanic recently (~2months ago).  There's a few links to it somewhere, but the developer stated banking CAs will delay auto-attack, however, you only need to leave a fraction of a second for the auto-attack to work,  basically any situation when you DONT bank CAs.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV>

[dazze]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> BeatinGuts wrote:<BR> <DIV><FONT color=#ff3300>The timing of an aa is simply down to having the ranged attack button pressed. If you have a 4 second delay on aa and are fighting for 80 seconds you will make 20 swings regardless of how many ca's you spam. The only delays you would get would be if you moved into stealth when the ranged attack button closes.</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>CA's DO delay auto attacks regardless. Wait until an autoattack is about to fire an hit Rain of Arrows early. Nothing is fired "as" this CA is spooling up. I'm not making this up. You <STRONG>will</STRONG> lower a shortbows DR greatly with CA's over the duration of a raid encounter. This is what I mean by either great of bad rangers... not everyone understands the mechanics yet even at lvl70.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff3300>But to be honest most top rangers do not bother to use mellee attacks in a raid situation, firstly it pisses the rl off as helears then have to worry about healing us and secondaly it makes a neglibible difference (if at all) to your dps. The only one worth doing is long shanks followed by the stealth attack (I cant remember the names).</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Another silly statement. If anything, top-end rangers value every source of damage we have including melee. They become expecially useful if you have the proper weapons. It makes for a <STRONG>big</STRONG> difference and <STRONG>great</STRONG> rangers know this.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>For example, the GDoH (another slow, top-end weapon) can also crit for 3k+. If you have it, you may as well joust it during your melee CA's. It's like free a 1k hit with the possibility of a 3-4k crit. You DO need to be using your melee CA's expecially if your mastered.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>And when your melee CA's are expended, use "point-blank-shot" (AA) which will put you back into ranged auto.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff3300>firstly it pisses the rl off as helears then have to worry about healing us</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I have a 70 defiler (which has become my main) and our rangers who are in AoE range are never a burden. Then again we're all geared up and we balance groups for resists. If anything when they take too much damage they simply (gasp) back up and wait till their group healer throws them a bone.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>In closing, Oasis has some rangers that will drop your jaw. Unfortunatly my ranger isnt one because all my DKP when to my Defiler. Even so, with mastercrafted armor and a treasured longbow I'll exceed 1.2k DPS easilly using the above tactics + caustic poisons. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Point is, these <STRONG>great</STRONG> rangers on our server are masters of timing and use <STRONG>every</STRONG> available source of damage they have. And these select few are the ones that will exceed 2k DPS consistently. Not just because they have Sarnak+T8 ammo, but because they know the class.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P>Firstly I may have misunderstood the issue on the the "ca delay" so ill retract what I said about that.</P> <P><BR>However I find it really interesting that you seem to suggest that a ranger could do 2k dps without Sarnak (or another t7 fabled long bow) and T8 ammo, find me one and i'll role a paladin<img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />. IMO rangers are more dependent than any class on the weapons (i.e. bows) they use. Personally I average about 1900dps(in reality my dps can be 800ish either side of that depending on the mob) and have been told by my peers that I am one of the top two rangers on Splitpaw (of course as SP is a Euro server you probably dont think that-that counts<img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />) so I really dont need to be told how to play my class. </P> <P>I agree that high dps is about timing, but again I stick to the point that melleing on a raid has a negligible effect on dps, and is more hassle than its worth.</P>

[Judist]

<P>Ya musta misread, I said the rangers that "exceed" 2k DPS dont do only because they <U>have</U> sarnak+T8, but also because they know their timing. And is because of that same reason your hitting 1900 DPS (cuz you do know yer timing). It's the melee they add in that helps them exceed the 2k mark consistently.</P> <P>Like said, a GDoH is just to darn strong to NOT joust in. Would be a waste of a 1-3k hit everytime you cycle the melee CA's. And many of these rangers have such weaponry. And besides, you definitly have time to throw in melee if you use the sweet spot. Only takes a few seconds.</P> <P>The topic of this thread did get skewed however. Stick with longbow... <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></P> <P> </P>

[TimidMou]

Well this post just makes me depressed. Ranger is the worst class to play unless you are in a super hardcore raid guild. For me, I have no longbow, I was happy enough to get my Wurm Destroyer Bow from labs, and it may be the best I have for a long while <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />. If a longbow ever does drop for my guild, it is unlikely a ranger will win it, thats a big if on the dropping part too (none has ever dropped for us). And T8 ammo? Just a pipe dream for now... After I spent all the effort getting almost complete T7 masters and best items I could find, it ends up like this...

[Judist]

<P>Get Raincaller or hopefully you still have the "Ghostly Bow of Bylze" from early Claymore. Both have the ability to out DPS the Wurm Destroyer if used correctly.</P> <P>If your guild does full Labs runs (assuming yes because you have wurm destroyer) but dosent consider itself hardcore, see if they'll try Deathtoll a few times. You'll find that the hardest mobs are actually the trash mobs (accidental wurm pops FTwipe). It's not so bad anymore. Just need 1 person with access.</P> <P>The A-drake (drops Ichor) can be tricky, and Tarinax (drops Bazul) requires good coordination, but if your already in full labs gear its very possible for most guilds to do... of course once your fluid with the strats. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></P> <P>Unfortunatly, The Matron will be locked down by the uber guilds so no chance of seeing LBoC in a casual guild.</P> <P>Lastly, Venekor (drops Sarnak) in HoS is not hard at all. Getting to him however can be. Once again if your in labs gear this becomes more of a tactic issue. Nothing really hardcore in HoS except 1-2 named. Of course getting Sarnak to drop is the worst part. </P> <P> </P>

[Starwindz]

<div></div>Ya we raid pretty hard and have cleared all those zones but those bows wont drop for us its crazy. Im hoping now to get one of thsoe EOF ones. And i wish i still had the ghost bow but stupidly i got rid of it i think before i really knew what i was doing. <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  and ya second dawn pretty much has matron on lock for the time being. Maybe we'll get a shot eventually.<div></div><p>Message Edited by Starwindz on <span class=date_text>12-30-2006</span> <span class=time_text>09:39 PM</span>