Ranger Kael vs. Skyshrine Armor

[Jimjam]

Originally Posted by feniin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Are you talking group content or raid content? Raid mobs chunk rangers in a way that they're nearly always getting hit for 90-100% of a mob's max damage, more than a druid or shaman would take. Rangers should be able to take damage as effectively as a bard or rogue but the armor class calculation does not seem to function in the slightest.

Its a design choice from kunark. In classic, classes maxed out their defence at 200 around level 39.

In Kunark all the melees got a boost to defence as they level up to 60, capping around 250. Except rangers who get to keep tanking like they are in their 30s 20+ levels later.

This was eventually addressed in late velious where the 60 ranger defence cap got raised to around 220, but this is still miles behind other classes.

It is said in trilogy era, dodge/parry/etc were calculated quite differently and worked more effectively at those skill levels than they do on p99 which uses a system from much later where skill caps (at higher level) were higher (yet onviously don’t result in most attacks getting stopped).

I’m not sure how true the above para is, but rangers have very generous dodge and parry caps in kunark - it seems the lack of evasion they get due to their mediocre defence skill should be offset by their superior dodge/parry skills … however, as mentioned previously, on p99 such skills are not hugely effective and don’t substantially improve ranger avoidance (certainly not as much as another 20-50 defence skill would).

Anyways, short story long, rogues have much better defence skill than rangers and should be expected to avoid/absorb hits better than rangers on account of that.