Assassin vs Ranger

[talbert]

<DIV>Can someone break down the adv and dis adv of each?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I wanted to start an ALT to play with my girlfiend and I wasn't clean on the different between the two. I haven't played EQ2 for sometime (over a year) so I'm out of the loop.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Is it just a matter of Ranged DPS vs Melee DPS? </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I have an extensive EQ1 background, but I don't see it helping me much here except for any analogies you might make.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Thanks</DIV><p>Message Edited by talbert on <span class=date_text>11-02-2006</span> <span class=time_text>01:36 PM</span>

[Judo13]

<P>Not exactly sure on the advantages and disadvantages, but I've talked to several rangers in game and read quite a few posts about how rangers used to be the best DD in the game until they got nerfed.  Now Assassins are.  I've heard that even swashbucklers can outdamage rangers now.  </P> <P>One problem with ranger is that they use both ranged and mellee, which sucks IMO.  They should be all range... I'd probably be one if they were!</P>

[Jayad]

There's two main problems with rangers:  getting a really nice bow at the raid end game, and arrow cost.  For alts they are probably pretty similar - pick your style which you like more.   I recently betrayed my 70 ranger so I have a decent perspective on it. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Toravisu]

I've played a Ranger up to 36, then Assassin up so my knowledge of upper tiers isn't there for Rangers.From what I've seen, Assassins are better than Rangers in all ways but one. Assassins, hands down, have better DPS. By far. I'm not sure about before the "nerf" but, right now, they do. Playing a Ranger, getting those high numbers was challenging (which isn't bad) as you have to "joust" a lot (run back, arrow attacks, run up, melee, repeat). The only advantage, imo, to playing a Ranger is, well, having so many ranged attacks. This is especially nice in PvP, but if you're playing on a PvE server, there's no comparison. Assassins are so, dare I say it, overpowered. Truthfully. At 58, you get an attack that is alike Wizard's Ice Comet... which is crazy. Assassins can just put their hate buff on the tank, sit behind the mob and almost guarantee top-of-the-parser DPS (at least at 60ish).<div></div>

[Comaagereon]

<DIV>The class isnt overpowered, its just good at its role.  Brigand/Swashie do less DPS but their function is debuffs, Wizards/Warlocks need some serious attention, for a quote tier 1 DPS they cannot compete with the summoners.  So as it stands the class is where it should be, this is not the case for rangers however.  Back in t6 the rangers were without question overpowered.  The standing joke was the ranger could start stream of arrows, go afk, and when they came back be on top of the parse.  This was recognized so the mechanics were changed to lower the ranger dps output, sadly the changes were far too much.  By rights the ranger should on a zone wide parse be on par with assassins.  Certain fights with aoe etc where assassins presumably must joust the ranger should beat the assassin, on other encounters the assassin should be on top.  This however is not the case.  Comparing a comparably geared assassin and ranger played with relatively equal skill the assassin will always do more damage than the ranger, and not by just a little.  All of this is most applicable to raid situations but it carries over to grouping as well.  I used to group all the time with a ranger, paladin, and fury to just farm things or have fun.  After the ranger nerf I saw a huge decrease in my friend's damage output, the mobs took longer to kill and in general we werent able to do things we once did due to the lower dps.  Rangers are still a fun class and still do good damage, their weakness is seen only when compared to the other classes.  As a class with no utility it should be on par with assassins, yet I regularly see swashies and brigands out dps rangers.</DIV>

[wazzaratio]

<P>It always really amazes me to read post about the damage tier. Wizards being bad dps, isn't the case. Its all about how the class is played.</P> <P>My wizard friend, is always the top dps on any named fight on a raid. Always! Most of the time, he is even doing twice as much damage as anyone else. But its also strange to see the rest of the nukers and pet classes sitting so far down the dps list.</P> <P>Its all about how the class is played, balance cant fix bad skills, and shouldn't try to.</P> <P>I do look forward to see the difference between me and him once i hit level 70 though <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></P> <P>Sorry for the highjack</P> <P>/Waz</P>

[SalBlu]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> wazzaratio wrote:<BR> <P>It always really amazes me to read post about the damage tier. Wizards being bad dps, isn't the case. Its all about how the class is played.</P> <P>My wizard friend, is always the top dps on any named fight on a raid. Always! Most of the time, he is even doing twice as much damage as anyone else. But its also strange to see the rest of the nukers and pet classes sitting so far down the dps list.</P> <P>Its all about how the class is played, balance cant fix bad skills, and shouldn't try to.</P> <P>I do look forward to see the difference between me and him once i hit level 70 though <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></P> <P>Sorry for the highjack</P> <P>/Waz</P> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE>If you're talking about raiding, then the raid force behind the Wizard is pretty sad.  If you're talking about single groups however, then you'd be correct.  My Wizard is hands down better damage in a small group setting.  Once you get in a raid however, add in my poisons, weapon procs, and melee buffs, my Assassin kills my Wizard in terms of raw damage.<BR>

[HazNpho]

Back on topic, If you want to compare ranger to asssassin, its pretty simple. From mine and my friends point of view he found that his ranger was almost useless in close areas because he could not get away to do most of his attacks without drawing agro. I always parsed more DPS then him, even if he could get away. The rangers are not exactly strong in melee combat which forces them to use thier bow to do good damage. And that also means auto attack falls short with high attack speed numbers.With my assassin I'm a jeweler and cannot count the amount of skill I have crafted for rangers that give them arrows, I don't know how it works, but from what I can see they can use their skills to create each Tier of arrow. I don't know if it stacks... So I don't know if you could fill your bags while your waiting for a raid to get ready or what not. I do know that at App IV 50+ arrows per shot at the skill is enough for a single fight, so keeping up with using that skill after every fight seems like a good idea.Again I don't play the ranger class, and my friend has since betrayed to FP and become an assassin, so you'll have to take my oppinions at face value untill someone can either confirm or debunk what I've said.<div></div>

[Jayad]

<DIV>As an assassin, I don't even go to range to do damage as it lowers my dps.  With my ranger, I would kind of joust in to do the attacks when range ones were down, unless you're at the point where both can go off.  The difference being, the "off" side for rangers (melee) casts very fast which makes it worthwhile to do.  The assassin's range attacks are very slow, and you get no bonuses on the bow, so your dps as a whole drops significantly at range, even compared to auto-attack! </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The way the summoning skill works is that you get  30, 45, or 60 arrows every 10 minutes depending on spell quality (adept1, adept3, master).  The arrows are of the tier that spell is.  Since the spell updates every 14 levels, there are times when the arrows are of the wrong tier.  For raiding, you really need the master level spell to not bleed cash into arrows, and it's not an easy master to find.  Before betraying, I was paying a lot of gold when raiding regularly. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Rangers *can* do good DPS on raids, but they have to have one of the best bows and one of the bows that summons rare ammo.  Both of these are hard to get, whereas good DW fabled weapons are more common.  In group settings I don't think I have noticed a huge difference, although I believe the assassin does slightly better.</DIV>

[TaleraRis]

Haz hit on a good point. Rangers lack in melee skills compared to the assassin melee skills, because our power is in our ranged abilities. We're also limited in ways to keep the mobs away from us, which affects me more as soloer admittedly, but still contributes to the difficulty we have in maintaining good DPS. Our arrow summon skill can only be used every 10 minutes and it's supposed to summon tier appropriate arrows. Right now, mine is between updates and so it's summoning arrows from the previous tier. Master 1 summons (I believe) 65, with the base being 35. Due to the sheer number of arrows we use, which has been a problem for me even just soloing, our summon skill has a hard time keeping up with our arrow usage. Many of us are in the habit of stocking arrows in the bank from summons, since they don't disappear on logging, so we're able to keep up with our demand. In addition, if we don't have decent tier-appropriate arrows, we suffer in terms of auto attack, which can be of great use to us in terms of damage. Some of the raiding rangers can give more on that viewpoint. Those are my main hindrances as a soloer. <div></div>

[nirav21]

<DIV>It is so stupid how they gave Assasin freezing strike line. while Rangers are the one who really need it.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Oh also u need to mention what class your gf is playing.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV><p>Message Edited by nirav21 on <span class=date_text>11-03-2006</span> <span class=time_text>10:53 PM</span>

[swiftne]

<DIV>Assassin vs Ranger is an interesting topic to pick. Although they are both predators they are very different. An assassin has alot more versatility than a ranger (Ranged skills-decent, Melee skills-high). This is not to say that a ranger is a bad class though. I play on a PvP server and most of the people you see on Qeynos side are rangers for the simple fact that they can pop off most of their skills before you know what hit you.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Also, Rangers were nerfed quite badly in PvP servers because they used to have this little tactic where they would pop in, unload, and pop out. They would stay in a safe area untill all skills were back up and repeat, thus they were played by 14 year olds who wanted nothing more from the game than titles. This created too much complaining as it was a little messed up, and was not how the PvP was designed to be.</DIV>

[beliker]

In pvp I would go  Assy over a Ranger any day of the week. We have some devistating melee attacks, and three ranged attacks, the two hardest hitting of those (which is quite hard) can be cast while on the run. I love it when people run after I come in and slap them with condemning blade, because then I get to hit them with my 2 ranged attacked which doo 300-600 a pop, then a reg bow attack that hits for 300-500 so it does quite a bit of damage.<div></div>

[steelbadger]

ahhhhh, I find it so depressing with the negativity on these boards.  If an assassin gets beaten by a wizard or a ranger it is not necessarily because "you suck", maybe it is because the person who did come top happened to be either very good at what they do, or had specced themselves specifically for each encounter.Less of the glass is half empty attitude <span>:smileytongue:</span><div></div>

[K'aldar]

<div><blockquote><hr>steelbadger wrote:ahhhhh, I find it so depressing with the negativity on these boards.  If an assassin gets beaten by a wizard or a ranger it is not necessarily because "you suck", maybe it is because the person who did come top happened to be either very good at what they do, or had specced themselves specifically for each encounter.Less of the glass is half empty attitude <span>:smileytongue:</span><div></div><hr></blockquote>Hear hear!From my trolling on the boards and being in one of crushbone's top raiding guilds, my experience is this.  99% of how good a certain class is depends on each individual group setup in the raid!  Myself, an Assassin, can outparse any class on any mob... however a good part of that is because being one of the few classes with hate transfer on the raid, i am almost always in the mt group with a DIRGE.  our sorcerers and summoners used to suck, but now that they're getting a troub and fury in their groups, they're rightfully passing my dps on groups(tho not by much yet, hopefully it'll keep getting higher).  on single targets they're still a little weak, working on that.. but the necros can come fairly close to my dps.  our rangers are great, they can come very close to my dps, and sometimes blow it away on ae,  but ONLY when they have good group setups, which i notice rangers tend to get put in the [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn]ty groups.Master's are also a big thing, i have 25 masters, the other 7 spells adept III.. anyone on the raid who has less than 20 masters wont' come close, those who have more than 25 can usually give me a run for my money.Gear!!  I have some of the best dw's for the class.. rangers NEED to have the bow from matron or venekor to compete!  This is the biggest thing that puts most rangers behind other classes.  Its much harder to get a good bow than it is to get dw's.  The bows from tarinax or the amorphous drake would also be decent for them, just not as good.So to sum it up I've seen parses of Wizards doing #1-2 dps every single fight, single target or groups, Assassins and Swashbucklers doing about equal dps at the top, and Rangers that can outparse other classes, and at the minimum keep up with them.   It's all about raid setups, masters, gear, who has what spells up for what fight(I usually communicate what spells I'm saving for named to the other dps, so they can do the same and give a good parse), and of course the person behind the toon.  IMO the classes are right about where they should be right now, save for a little tweaking and the matter of certain tier2 classes outdamaging tier1.</div>

[Crychtonn]

<DIV>The first thing to know is what class is your girlfriend planning on playing.  Second is, are you planning to just duo for the most part or do full groups.  If you plan to duo then I'd say don't go with either assassin or ranger unless your girlfriend plans to play a crusader type tank that can heal.  Both classes are terrible at tanking if she plans to go healer.  They are both to reliant on postion or stealth attacks that can't be used when forced to tank.  Another big factor is, what are your long term plans.  Do you plan to raid alot or just do group stuff.  Without knowing the answer to these types of questions you can't be given a solid answer.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV>

[Sotaudi]

<P>Too much is being made of the fact that Ranger's have ranged attacks and are "weak" on melee.  There is a sweet spot where you are far enough back to use ranged attacks but not too far away so you can also use melee attacks.  So as long as you do not have the attention of the mob, you can stand in the sweet spot and use all your attacks.  Even if you get slightly outside of the sweet spot, it is not that much of a loss of DPS to move a few feet in and a few feet out to slide in and out of minimum bow range.</P> <P>That is not to say that Assassin's do not have some advantages.  The hate transfer is a big factor and there were some changes a while back that did decrease a Ranger's DPS compared to Assassin.  But when either class is free to act because someone else is holding the mob's attention, the weighting of the number of ranged attacks is not as big of a factor as is being stated.</P>

[SpiralDown]

<div></div>It sounds like the OP is talking about grouping and duoing, so... Ranger and Assassin DPS is equal, except in the gap between starting raiding and getting the best bows, but that seems more of an itemization issue than a class one. If you dont raid you will never notice.  In groups I, as a ranger, have never been out DPSed by an assassin on a consistent basis... though, that proves nothing as DPS has SOOOO many factors its hard to say anything in absolute terms.   I also think rangers have the edge in soloing, not by too much, but its there.  Also, with the new APs and a change to a CA, rangers will be getting a boost.  Rangers do FEEL more versitile, since you can melee or stand back, that isnt a big deal though, but it feels nice. Plus rangers are the only class that 'melees' from a distance, so you'll be unique <span>:smileytongue:</span>.  Just to mention the difference in ranged vs melee a sec... Both classes do one extrodinarily well and do as much of the other as they need.  Rangers melee as good as they need to and have plenty of ways (especially at higher levels) to get to range if they're alone. Which should you choose?  I'd go by RP reasons, or just which ever seems cooler to you, or ask your girlfriend what she wants to play and pick the pred of the same allignment, or pick whichever town you like better, or start in the new one.  Both classes are great and do what they're suppose to very well. No worries <span>:smileywink:</span> <div></div><p>Message Edited by SpiralDown on <span class=date_text>11-10-2006</span> <span class=time_text>03:44 AM</span>