Ranger and Assassin

[Omegawolf]

<p>I know that technically this is the wrong forum to post this, but the class forums seem to get little to no attention anymore, so I figured I might actually have a chance to get my question answered here. I originally posted this in the Assassin forum and it hasn't budged an inch in three days.</p><p>So here goes:</p><p>I know this is a newbie question to ask, especially considering how long I've been playing the game over all, but I often wonder what the diffeences between the Ranger and Assassin are. I currently have a level 60 Ranger that I love to play, and I have a level 10 Assassin that I haven't really gotten around to trying out quite yet.</p><p>The question I want to ask anyone who knows (played both to a decent level) is how different are the two classes? Are they similar enough that I am potentially wasting a character slot by having the Assassin? Or are they different enough that it would be worth leveling both up? What are the main playstyle differences if any? I don't want to get the Assassin leveled up only to find that I've wasted my time and one of my very precious and limited character slots for nothing.  Thanks for any advice or info.</p>

[Xalmat]

<p>Rangers primarily use a bow, Assassins prefer to use daggers and swords.</p><p>That's it in a nutshell.</p>

[brightwhite]

<p>Assassins get a hate transfer, and Apply Poisons, a buff that adds significantly to a groupmate's DPS, combined with their own unbeatable DPS making them highly desired in groups and raids.</p><p>Rangers bring nothing useful to a group or raid except their own (inferior) DPS.</p><p>Changes coming soon will help, one hopes.  Personally I cannot believe how long this glaring disparity between the two preds has been allowed to go on.</p>

[Eritius]

<p>Rangers are getting roughly a 20% increase in ranged weapon damage (not sure if that will carry over to CAs or not) So the inferior damage won't be happening.</p><p>But that speaking from a 24man raid POV.</p><p>In Groups, Ranger do some pretty good damage. The desparity between Assassins and Rangers there is hardly noticeable (as the problem seems to be a raid buff stacking issue, Assassins just do more with buffs hands down).</p><p>The difference is playstyle, the ranger does use a bow primarily. But both classes will use melee and ranged. The sweet spot as they call it is 5 meters from the target where you can use both bow and melee skills without moving. With that said, you'll be sitting 5 meters from a mob as a ranger, or 2-5 as an assassin.</p><p>In soloing is where the two really start looking a bit different. A ranger will want to start a fight far away and deal as much damage as possible before the mob gets to them, then engage in roguelike combat (stun, get behind, backstab, ect). Where an assassin front loads the damage from stealth and then does the stun backstab routine.</p>

[Striikor]

<p><cite>Taemien@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Rangers are getting roughly a 20% increase in ranged weapon damage (not sure if that will carry over to CAs or not) So the inferior damage won't be happening.</p><p>But that speaking from a 24man raid POV.</p></blockquote><p>In a 4xRaid last night for instance Ranged Autoattack was 18%. It is usually 20-25% of total DPS. A 20% increase in the top end of that or 20%*25% is a net 5% increase, not enough to close the gap. In comparable groups and equally equipped Rangers are ~15% behind Assassins at least in my experience and looking at parses. Ranger's are supposedly getting flurry and AoE off Ranged AA's. Assassins are getting Flurry and AoE for the off-hand in addition to what they get now. They also get melee procs off melee AA which ranged melee does not get.</p><p> I have a T8 Assassin and a T9 Ranger. The ranger is a lot of fun and totally different to play than an Assassin which is also fun. Ranger is all about maintaining 2 to 5 meter distance (outside of melee attack AA range) and timing with a little positioning throw in. An Assassin is about stealth, getting on the mob, position and timing chained CA events. Both are challenging to consistently maintain top DPS. Both lose DPS due to interrupts and bad positioning for the assassin and bad distance for the Ranger.</p><p>The Assassins chain events are interrupted alot  and the Rangers long casts are interrupted alot in a raid, the interrupts are more detrimental to the assassin than the ranger in general. But the Assassin has significantly higher DPS potential and much better grouping logic, if you want to raid.</p><p>It can take some effort to run one and then the other because they are very different techniques.</p>