| Starwynd |
08-14-2010 10:38 AM |
As much as there are deficiencies in the ranger class pre-Kunark and even pre-AA's, I'm still playing a ranger because I played one on EQLive. I want to re-live that feeling of bringing a ranger up, as hard as it may be. I play more hours and get groups more than some of my non-hybrid counterparts and slowly, they are getting into the higher levels faster than I am because of the exp penalty. Nevertheless, I enjoy my moments playing a ranger.
I've gotten my archery trained almost up to bar with my regular melee weapons, so I can actually land shots and do damage. I understand archery was not exactly "strong" until later expansions, but I don't care, I'm still playing a ranger now. I will use my archery not only to pull, but to do ranged damage when the opportunity presents itself. Archery is great damage dealer when soloing as well, keeping all my mana reserves available for spells versus using it all to heal myself.
Suffice to say, I'm a believer that every class can be played efficient, BY the player behind the screen. Those who mock ranger classes incessilently find themselves on /ignore very quickly and denied a group spot if I'm GL (which is often since I like to form my own groups) or if I can change the mind of the GL. I think we all know, your reputation in this game matters when it comes to getting groups or not, so if you join for the sake of harassing others players, including rangers, you may find yourself outside of a group very quickly.
During prime time, I've done /who all [class] on this server and it's freaky to see how few rangers there are. There's no "too many players to be listed" message at the bottom and the other day, I found only 11 on including myself, which were all listed as being up in the planes. I can understand some may be anon/RP - but considering if you do that same command with other classes, you will see rangers aren't favoured until later expansions when they become stronger.
I believe archery later on has "double damage" for non-moving and non-rooted mobs as Ripcord mentioned which is an amazing difference. Consider if normally you made 100 damage per hit, you would now be making 200 dmg a hit with a properly-tanked mob. On Live, I barely had reason to care about what melee weapons I carried for the purposes of attacking, they were all their as haste/stat-raising items since my bow was indefinitely my primary weapon. Nevertheless, I can see many drawbacks of playing a ranger on this server, but it doesn't hinder MY want to play the class, because I'm here to have fun, not always to "be the best."
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