Please help me with my "rhythm"

[Deaudlus]

<div></div><div></div><p>I recently started playing a ranger to give my wifes wizard a chance to catch up with my swashie. My swashie is lvl 45 and for some reason there seems to be a lack of rangers on my server that lvl so I rarely get to group with one. What I understand of combat is that its ideal to find the “Sweet spot” where you can use your ranged CA's and melee CA's. I generally don't have an issue with that however I seem to have a problem with my rhythm.</p><p></p><p>When I'm grouped I normally start a fight with a combination of 2 of my current 4 ranged CA's (I probably should have mentioned that I'm lvl 21) I am using a bow with a delay of 6 (maybe 7, can't remember off the top of my head) From watching the number It looks like a ranged AA is added to that opening salvo. Now here is where it gets a bit complicated. I'm working off the assumption that that ranged AA that happens during my opening salvo starts my ranged AA timer at 6 seconds until the next ranged AA.</p><p></p><p>First question. Does melee AA reset ranged AA? So, If I fire off my salvo which starts my ranged AA timer and I then fire off 3 melee CA's and a melee AA has that then reset my ranged AA timer back to 6? Or is my Ranged AA timer still ticking down from 6 from my opening salvo? I REALLY hope I explained that correctly.</p><p></p><p>The reason I am asking is that I'm trying to figure out the best way to time my Ranged CA's and Melee CA's so that I don't back up my Ranged AA that is a large source of DPS. IF I opoen with 2 ranges CA's and a ranged AA, then fire my 3 melee CA's should I then back up and just wait on ranged AA until my melee CA's or more ranged CA's are usable again or should I move in to melee and wait for ranged CA's to be up again.</p><p></p><p>I hope I did a decent enough job of explaining this so that I didn't confuse you all as much as I think I just confused my self.</p><p></p><p>Edit.  I think I may have come up with a beter way to explain this.  I'm going leave the original text though in case this isnt the correct wya to state it.  If I fire a ranged attack (6 second timer) and then move in a use 3 melee ca's (3 seconds worth of attack) that should leave me 3 seconds until my ranged AA attack is recycled.  Should I stand there and melee for 3 seconds, or stand back and wait for my ranged AA to recycle.</p><div></div><p>Message Edited by Rollotamasi on <span class=date_text>01-12-2007</span> <span class=time_text>07:26 AM</span>

[Gnome mercy]

<P>well honestly it really depends on your playstyle, I never wait for my AA to come back up but then again i always halfto cycle through my combart arts choosing which one to fire so i dont get killed by an angry mob that has ^^^ and im not even expecting it.</P> <P>Honestly your ranged is your best attack, with the proper equipment (IE Mastercrafted bow + proper poisons) you can easily outdamage with your ranged AA than your melee. Now on the other hand bows do grab ALOT of aggro so if you say start a fight tankg rabs aggro you waste your triple shot then double shot then let your AA go off then start blowin more combat arts not only will you pull aggro but you will also be out of combart arts to use when you badly need them, mostly i start off the fight using my sniper shot hit him in the back good damage possible good crit too, then i let my ranged AA go off twice to let the tank grab some aggro then by then thanks to how fast mobs go down he is usually at about half hp then all i need to do is hit my triple shot then he is nearly dead, and if i feel like it i will run up and melee him a little bit just to save some arrows. so honestly it just depends on how you play</P>

[Dogfood76]

<P>I'm no expert (level 30 ranger) but here's a couple things I've noticed.</P> <P> </P> <P>First off, I rarely group.  So I usually start with the Steady Aim skill, then the non-positional from-stealth ranged attack immediately queueing up wounding arrow or triple arrow or whatever I have available at the time.  I have noticed that in between the CAs, I get an autoattack.  So Sneakyshot -> autoattack -> Wounding Arrow, and I didn't wait to let the hotbar refresh in between CAs.</P> <P> </P> <P>When in a group, I usually just stand back and let my autoattack go, though since I am used to soloing and swinging away like a maniac, the 7 sec delay feels like a REALLY long time.  I'm pretty sure though that once your autoattack for the ranged weapon is started, you cannont reset it by going into melee.  Otherwise you could just stand at range, shoot once, tap Melee attack button, tap Ranged attack button and immediately fire again.  Though I might try that tonight just in case it does work, hehe.</P> <P> </P> <P>I don't have a DPS tracker or parser or anything, but I would imagine that to get the highest DPS you should probably try to melee between ranged autoattacks.  Maybe at higher level with haste buffs that becomes unnecessary, but at 30th I don't have a lot of haste and I have tons of time to take a step forward and melee if I wanted to.  Since you can autoattack with ranged while moving around, it should be relatively easy to fire off all your applicable ranged CAs (with a free AA in the middle), step in and fire off all melee CAs, wait 2-3 seconds in melee AA range, then tap ranged attack as you step back quickly.  As soon as you see the shot go off, step back in and hit melee attack.  Insert ranged and melee CAs as available.  Obviously, you may not be able to literally fire off all CAs immediately due to aggro concerns, but you get the idea.  Some filtering of the combat spam would be necessary so you can see your ranged AA, I would imagine.</P> <P> </P> <P>I am also curious to see if there are other opinions from more advanced rangers...</P>

[Gnome mercy]

<P>Ok here we go.</P> <P>This is a parsed raid without a mob using an aoe I got up into the 1200's parse, thats burn him as fast as possible and make my dps look good meaning hit autoattack let the first shot go then round up with steady aim then burst triple shot double shot then give my CAs a sec to refresh run in and do my back stabs and my debuff then back up and run all my CAs just keeping a couple for when my dps starts going down so i can burst some more, basically thats how it runs, now</P> <P>I prsed 980 in a ranged combat fight only was in CT btw, the guy had a major AE that ate away most of my life so i stayed at a range and bursted as much as possible, its not much i know but that was my situation, basically in order to eprform the BEST possible dps you halfto do your backstabs and some other melee CAs, but in groups its pointless, mobs go down so fast i just run 2 CAs then let him die with my autoattack</P>