Rangers ever use range in VoS?

[godbox]

I have a memory of using bows as a primary ranger weapon but can't remember if it was VoS or luclin or imaginations brought in by immersion in the ranger character.

[Rararboker]

Luclin.

[godbox]

Too bad. Made the class for me

[DevGrousis]

Velious when the AA system was implemented. I've always thought that there were a few things that Luclin brought about that made extremely positive changes. Making rangers RANGED was one of those things.

Would be cool if they somehow brought certain AA's into the game.

*incoming not classic zerg*

[jarshale]

Not making rangers a legit ranged dps class with situational bows and arrows along with spells was a huge fuck up by Sony. But yeah not classic, etc.

[Swish]

Not making rangers a legit ranged dps class with situational bows and arrows along with spells was a huge fuck up by Sony. But yeah not classic, etc.

weird isnt it? considering the fine job they did with the bard class.

[Erica]

Dungeons and Dragons: Online has the best implementation of a Ranger out of any game I have seen. You won't do as much damage as the best melee dps types but the utility, insane range you can shoot and cool downs make up for it.

I always wondered why EQ had so many melee and they still decided to make the ranger melee focused as well.

[khanable]

Yeah, the ranger class not having superb ranged abilities from the get-go was one of EQ's greatest fuck ups.

Imagine a ranger epic bow with cool lightning and shit with bow/arrow haste

hot damn boner

[Daldaen]

Yeah, the ranger class not having superb ranged abilities from the get-go was one of EQ's greatest fuck ups.

Imagine a ranger epic bow with cool lightning and shit with bow/arrow haste

hot damn boner

Yet another reason PoP was the pinnacle of EQ. Rangers with bows being top end DPS (check). Baller bows (check).

PoP #1.

[Coridan]

Minus PoK books, PoP wasn't too awful

[Korain]

Don't they get some sweet bow discipline in Velious? It's only like a 20s duration, but a friend told me it rocks.

[wormed]

I liked PoP.

[Daldaen]

Minus PoK books, PoP wasn't too awful

Nothing about PoP was poorly implemented other than their initial flagging system. Once it was resolved to allow levels to unlock access to all the groupable zones it was perfection.

Books were great.

[Daldaen]

Don't they get some sweet bow discipline in Velious? It's only like a 20s duration, but a friend told me it rocks.

http://wiki.project1999.com/Disciplines

Trueshot shown as a 2 minute disc doubling bow damage (for some reason 3 sticks in my mind though).

The problem with Trueshot in old discipline world, is burning it prevents you from using Weaponshield. And as far as tactics go, Weaponshield is far more valuable to a Raid than some ranger doing mediocre Windstriker DPS.

[Kutsumo]

There has never been an expansion or patch of EQ where bow was the primary means of DPS for rangers. In most iterations after Trueshot came out, you could do more burn DPS with a bow than with melee, but that's only 2 minutes (can get up to 3ish with extended AAs) out of over an hour cooldown. That's not to say you couldn't keep shooting arrows without TS, but it was usually only ~60% of the dps of melee when not disc'd.

Headshot AA and Vinelash Cascade spell (frontal cone root with unlimited targets) made grinding XP with bow-only a thing, though.

[curtischoy]

There has never been an expansion or patch of EQ where bow was the primary means of DPS for rangers.

what? Bow DPS was insane with the AA. Maybe it was PoP or a bit later, but rangers bow was out dpsing EVERY other class, not just ranger melee. And not just with TS.

[Kutsumo]

what? Bow DPS was insane with the AA. Maybe it was PoP or a bit later, but rangers bow was out dpsing EVERY other class, not just ranger melee. And not just with TS.

During burns with trueshot up, YES. I even mentioned that in my post. Again, 2 minutes out of every 60. Melee has always been better without trueshot burning unless you have bad weapons or have neglected melee AAs.

[curtischoy]

And not just with TS.

[Kutsumo]

Proof? I only mained ranger from PoP through RoF, with a few breaks thrown in but I do not recall any times when non trueshot bow DPS beat out melee.

[DevGrousis]

Yet another reason PoP was the pinnacle of EQ. Rangers with bows being top end DPS (check). Baller bows (check).

PoP #1.

If you take away the Book system from the plane of Knowledge, PoP was an awesome xpac. It would be cool if in 2016, well after Velious was launched, the team here at P99 went to work on some "custom content". And i do not mean TOTALLY new stuff. I just mean a selective roll out of features, and zones that were true to EverQuests original spirit. For instance, some of the zones in PoP, making rangers ranged.. etc.

[Daldaen]

During burns with trueshot up, YES. I even mentioned that in my post. Again, 2 minutes out of every 60. Melee has always been better without trueshot burning unless you have bad weapons or have neglected melee AAs.

Not really no.

Especially during PoP. Partially due to itemization. Because the 2nd/3rd best bows of the day were the Obsidianwood/Primordial Driftwood Bows. Though they required drops from the elemental plane to make, they were tradeable (the later being easily farmed with a group at D3 camp).

Basically it lead to situations where many Rangers had access to an EP quality bow and their weapons were just VT quality or Epic quality. The difference between them was stark.

Even once Ranger got access to EP No Drop 1handers, the bows still out parsed. Looking through some posts from EQMac, 65 Ranger with max AA/ATK pulled out 150 DPS with Coirnav Hammer/Agnarr Sword during a 10 hour parse with 100% Haste. Now bow parses of 11+ hours pulled up:

Featherwood - 150
Stonewood - 153.5
Primordial - 156.8
Obsidianwood - 166.2
Bow of the Tempest (PoTime) - 175.5

All done with 100% Haste. Bows were the best option even when other things were equal. The reason many Rangers didn't use bows 100% of the time was because of arrow collision. Any mob being corner tanked, the arrows would get lost in the wall and do 0 damage. As a result If you wanted that ranger burn and solid sustained DPS, you had to tank the mob out of a wall/corner which meant balancing push and less easy to avoid AEs.

Archery also had the benefit (atleast on Mac server, but I'm fairly sure this is a classic feature) that it generated nearly 0 hate. So while Rogues had to evade and monks had to FD and Wizards had to Concussion pants and Necros had to FD... Rangers were always the last to die in a wipe because of how little hate archery generated. I would imagine it calculated the hate off the arrow instead of off the bow, which bugged it to be 1 hate per arrow or something.

[Morlaeth]

Yeah, the ranger class not having superb ranged abilities from the get-go was one of EQ's greatest fuck ups.

Imagine a ranger epic bow with cool lightning and shit with bow/arrow haste

hot damn boner

Bards should've been instrument and song pew pew only.

[fadetree]

Pop was freakin awesome, the pinnacle of EQ. But yeah, ranger aa's were in luclin...it was glorious to finally have something special to do. We were not top DPS automatically, but we were close for the duration of trueshot.

[fadetree]

Not really no.

Especially during PoP. Partially due to itemization. Because the 2nd/3rd best bows of the day were the Obsidianwood/Primordial Driftwood Bows. Though they required drops from the elemental plane to make, they were tradeable (the later being easily farmed with a group at D3 camp).

Basically it lead to situations where many Rangers had access to an EP quality bow and their weapons were just VT quality or Epic quality. The difference between them was stark.

Even once Ranger got access to EP No Drop 1handers, the bows still out parsed. Looking through some posts from EQMac, 65 Ranger with max AA/ATK pulled out 150 DPS with Coirnav Hammer/Agnarr Sword during a 10 hour parse with 100% Haste. Now bow parses of 11+ hours pulled up:

Featherwood - 150
Stonewood - 153.5
Primordial - 156.8
Obsidianwood - 166.2
Bow of the Tempest (PoTime) - 175.5

All done with 100% Haste. Bows were the best option even when other things were equal. The reason many Rangers didn't use bows 100% of the time was because of arrow collision. Any mob being corner tanked, the arrows would get lost in the wall and do 0 damage. As a result If you wanted that ranger burn and solid sustained DPS, you had to tank the mob out of a wall/corner which meant balancing push and less easy to avoid AEs.

Archery also had the benefit (atleast on Mac server, but I'm fairly sure this is a classic feature) that it generated nearly 0 hate. So while Rogues had to evade and monks had to FD and Wizards had to Concussion pants and Necros had to FD... Rangers were always the last to die in a wipe because of how little hate archery generated. I would imagine it calculated the hate off the arrow instead of off the bow, which bugged it to be 1 hate per arrow or something.

I think distance was a factor in the hate calcs too. I always shot from max range. For corner tanking I found that if I could lev up somewhere above the crowd I could get a decent hit rate.

[wormed]

If you take away the Book system from the plane of Knowledge, PoP was an awesome xpac. It would be cool if in 2016, well after Velious was launched, the team here at P99 went to work on some "custom content". And i do not mean TOTALLY new stuff. I just mean a selective roll out of features, and zones that were true to EverQuests original spirit. For instance, some of the zones in PoP, making rangers ranged.. etc.

Agreed.

I don't mind how Nilbog hates the idea of AA's being, "hey, you dinged 50 another 6x for that skill, grats!", but he did say that maybe some class defining AA's would be implemented via quest, or something like that.

As a Paladin... I want some of those AA's! Slay Undead was very cool. Hell, even Mass Group Buff was just awesome.

[uygi]

IIRC ranger DPS in Velious was almost worthwhile with TS and a stationary mob. TS made your DPS kinda-similarly equivalent to AM3.

Ranger bow AAs were really just a Luclin thing. EQ/AM3 were the OP abilities. After that you increased your DPS with gear and by just buying crit AAs and boosting ATK (which applied to melee as well...). Archery stayed viable because for a while they kept putting out good enough bows. By GoD/OoW era the melee AAs had bridged the remaining gap and properly set up melee rangers were doing more DPS.

But that was never really the point. There were lots of raids where only rangers could avoid AEs. I still thought Mystical Arbiter of Earth was super fun as a ranger. Everybody else got hit with the mana/hp DoT and all died, but the rangers stayed out of range. As soon as the mob died, the rangers would race in and heal like fuck to keep 1-2 clerics up. The clerics got a kick out of that. Of course on P99 we'd just use clickies so it wouldn't matter.

The utility of the class was always the point. In any zone with some room (and especially once snare and root stacked) rangers were solid pullers/CCers. The original harmony spell was OP for a long time, but eventually phased out. The new single target harmony was still really powerful combined with root/snare. Add ranged DPS and WS for emergencies and they were badass.

[webrunner5]

http://wiki.project1999.com/Disciplines

Trueshot shown as a 2 minute disc doubling bow damage (for some reason 3 sticks in my mind though).

The problem with Trueshot in old discipline world, is burning it prevents you from using Weaponshield. And as far as tactics go, Weaponshield is far more valuable to a Raid than some ranger doing mediocre Windstriker DPS.

That is not true. Having 6, 8, 10 or more Rangers doing Trueshot at the same time with crits, softening up the Mob, and dying doing it, is probably the reason you might have had some good gear on live in a Raid that was successful. Not counting tracking the Mob to find it to start with. :D

Give a Ranger a BIG hug the next time you see one. :p

[curtischoy]

Nah I don't have any proof. I just remember ranger bow dps was the best for a while. Maybe stopped being the best after GoD came out? I don't remember.

And it def wasn't due to the competition neglecting melee aa. I was in raiding guilds and many had max aa the month after any expansion with new aa came out.

[Xealias]

Most rangers probably could stay ranged DPS till the darkglint blade dropped in Ikkinz. The infamous elf shoe. That said, many didn't, because you could easily approach ranged dps with time weapons and very few guilds didn't have everyone equipped with gear by the time you could start raiding GoD.

http://zam.zamimg.com/images/5/0/50af400a3dd0e904fae69af200dfb084.png

As for ranger AAs, click snare and insta-invis were pretty game changing for me. I'm sure AM3/EQ were at the time, but in the long run snare/camo were insanely powerful abilities.

[Thulack]

The fun times being a ranger doing Plane of Time Zek bros lol.

[azeth]

What is VoS?

[godbox]

What is VoS?

Dyslexic velious

[ghost182]

Archery in velious isn't good but isn't useless as a source of damage with the 2 fast cast nukes between shots. Seems like the bigger mistake was trying to make a hybrid out of an already hybrid class like Druid. Nukes as a source of ability with melee was a terrible idea when you can't melee through casting time.

[Ciroco]

?

Nukes during melee are still a pretty good DPS increase, especially if you're not dual wielding.

[eisley]

proc avatar

back out, shoot bow for 2 mins. return back to rogue jr mode

[fadetree]

?

Nukes during melee are still a pretty good DPS increase, especially if you're not dual wielding.

Yah Woodsmans + fast nukes
go go go

proc avatar, pop trueshot, feel studly pew pew pew
go back to your day job when TS drops

[milsorgen]

Nothing about PoP was poorly implemented other than their initial flagging system. Once it was resolved to allow levels to unlock access to all the groupable zones it was perfection.

Books were great.

Lowering the barriers to travel is one of the great fuckups of MMOs in general if you ask me.

[Daldaen]

Lowering the barriers to travel is one of the great fuckups of MMOs in general if you ask me.

Meh. When exploring a new location/expansion/game, I agree. Exploring a new dungeon, traveling across a new continent etc. After the newness wears off and the immersion decreases, running across West Karana for the 15th time really loses its allure and becomes a time sink more than anything else. You just auto run and hope you don't hit a tree while you make yourself food...

However when I started back in 1999, I fondly remember my run from Qeynos to Kelethin at level 9 on my Druid. One of the most exciting experiences in the game for me no doubt. 15 years on, I made that run again on my Druid at a later level I think, but after that with a few level 60s and some random other Alts, running around zones I've explored every corner of just isn't fun. Killing stuff, doing quests, grouping and raiding are what's fun now that I've finished exploring EQ.

One of EQs greatest fuckups was the spreadsheetization of quests and itemization. Nothing was unique when I quit. There were 4-5 Mercenary kill X mob quests per zone and 3-6 Partisan "lore" quests per zone and they all felt void of life. Little to no figuring them out was involved. The itemization since around SoF onwards was horrid. They standardized focus items so you didn't have to look at that, you maxed all stats, resists and mod2s innately without caring. The power difference between randomly picking gear from raids and selecting the BIS gear was negligible.

[Visual]

Lowering the barriers to travel is one of the great fuckups of MMOs in general if you ask me.

iirc Mcquaid fought to keep them out of the game, but was overruled by the team consensus

[TarukShmaruk]

Glad to see so much love for PoP around here

Luck in was a disastrous expansion with awful zones and awful lore and awful models but AAs imo were a needed thing and PoP was just awesome

The only thing I didn't like was how they kept trying to improve the graphics but ended up making everything look awful

The art style used in vanilla thru velious was fantastic

[curtischoy]

Classic - SoD; Luclin was the best expansion (PoP as a very close second). Can't say for anything after SoD cuz that is when I quit.

[captnamazing]

I think that classic EQ rangers are heavily modeled after Tolkien's idea of the "ranger," which is a nature/warrior tracker who is excellent with a bow, but ultimately comes down to fighting with swords and shit

[kaev]

I think that classic EQ rangers are heavily modeled after Tolkien's idea of the "ranger," which is a nature/warrior tracker who is excellent with a bow, but ultimately comes down to fighting with swords and shit

Agree. It was pretty obvious that Aradune (McQuaid's ingame avatar) was pretty much a DnD take on Aragorn sans the "heir to an ancient line of kings" bs.

[Kealenfists]

PoP was pretty sweet, and the AA system with Luclin brought with it some much needed end game grinding, separating someone who just hit 60 and someone who had been there, even the zones in PoP were pretty awesome and the flagging system made it so you have to be end game to really be end game, but it defiantly took away from the classic aspect. Starting with the wizard spires to the nexus and the killing of the tunnel! with the bazaar.