I have voiced the same concern in other posts, and most the time its met with replies about not being a true ranger fan, or wanting to be dps kings again. And as some pointed out, it's true that most guild wouldn't kick a competent ranger, as there dps is in line. But my complaints are more about our utility and value to a raid. Sure this might not affect 90% of rangers out there, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be addressed.
We bring good dps to a raid no doubt, but we don't bring much else. We have like 2 debuffs, an agro sucking bird, a 50m de-agro pull, and a short range unobstructed atk. With classes that can pet pull, monks w/ FD and tsunami, our pulling days are over when we are cut back to 35m. As for mircle arrow, it's hardly a necessity, and more often than not just a work around to aviod doing something the way it was intended. Our debuffs are nothing special, most classes prolly don't even know we have any at all. The bird sucks agro from non-fighters is nice, but to be honest on all the raids I've never really noticed a difference. I do notice that when he dies, I jump right up to the top. But the wizzy, even with bird sucking, are still pulling agro as often. Did I mention the bird sucking, because that's what he does, he sucks...agro...apparently. That brings us to our dps. Well this is what we are known for, and you can all argue this way and that, but our dps is competitive enough that we still get included on raids. What isn't mentioned is that all the other dps that we compete with have far more group utility than we do. If you can name another class that can match our dps, but has less group/raid utility feel free to let me know. It would certainly shut me up real fast. And I'm sure there are more than a few that wouldn't mind that.
Ok case and point....our dps is good, our utility is not. As raids try to become more effecient the fat gets trimmed. If you can bring in a class that can match our dps and has more utility, then why keep a ranger. If you can bring in a class that can dramatically buff/debuff to the point where the entire raid is doing more dps even w/ a ranger, then why keep the ranger. Most guilds this won't be a problem, so far it's not for mine. But I make sure as all heck I'm on time for raids and that I make every one of them.
It seems to me that it wouldn't be the end of the world to give rangers a little more utility. In fact I wouldn't mind if our bird skill was adjusted to sipheon much more agro. Almost like a dispatch for agro. Plus it kinda goes along with assassin's and their hate transfer. If our bird was as useful/noticable as assassin hate transfer, I think I would be less a grump. If that's even possible.
-Katsugen
failure to proofread ftl
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Message Edited by Katsugen on 05-17-2006 10:38 AM
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Message Edited by Katsugen on 05-17-2006 10:41 AM