Ranger Twink Advice

[dartaniun]

I second Aaramis' statements. Current ranger spell set and skill caps are not bad, but they get a very nice boost in Velious. DPS boost is very nice, the discs are extremely useful in raids. Our dps with trueshot and a good bow is fantastic, and it's pretty much agro free. Ranged dps agro doesn't get increased until PoP when they gave us archery mastery AA and realized it was too strong to not have agro. But for right now, you can stand back and do as much dmg as possible and not worry about agro.

Don't forget to pick up a swarmcaller, starts procing at 46 and it's a extremely useful weapon to have. Rangers aren't the best at melee dps or pulling (at least indoors), but we excel at multiple things. It's really a great hybrid class in the multitude of things that we offer to groups. Swarmcaller is one of those things that is a must have if you don't have epics.

As far as stats go for a wood elf I would dump everything into str. If you plan on doing a bit more soloing come Velious, Wood Elf is a great choice due to the higher wisdom. If you want you could put a couple points into that also. I wouldn't waste much with sta because you don't really have enough points to make that much of a difference, str and wis are your primary choices. Dex will become very useful when you start to use ranged dmg in the higher levels but by then you can increase that with gear. Very nice 1hs from Kael that procs a dispel on yourself but it has a ton of dex on it, very nice piece to keep for +dex gear when you want that extra ranged dps. Whenever you have to melee, just switch the weapon out or you'll proc and lose buffs. I wish I had placed more stats into str when I started this toon, but I balanced it between str/dex/wis

[Nisei]

Thanks for the useful information, Dart.

[fiveeauxfour]

Maybe Mithril Vams for the arm slot for the str and mr

[ghost182]

The variety of tools, buffs, and utility is so overwhelming! I am playing in Velious right now, and I've got to keep up:

1. Diamondskin
2. Thorncoat
3. Storm Strength
3. Feet like Cat (lol)
4. Greater Wolf Form
5. Call of the Predator
6. Call of Fire
7. Chloroplast
8. Shield of Spikes

It takes a lot of mana to self buff everything up I'm noticing; granted, most of these (minus call of fire, chloroplast, and shield of spikes) lasts for 30mins - 1hr. I'm keeping the 3 short duration buffs memorized along with my 2 quick cast nukes (calefaction((spell?)) and call of flame), snare (or root), greater heal, and harmony.

What i'm not liking so far:

1. When I nuke I'm not auto attacking, where as rogues, monks, and warriors get to add burst damage while still meleeing (backstabs, kicks, crits).

2. My earthcaller causes more aggro than i'd like, and I don't want to be casting cinder jolt, so I use a different weapon in group situations.

3. Weaponshield is very useful, trueshot is cool but we should have had this all along as the equivalent to lay on hands and harmtouch.

4. This is the biggest one, if i'm solo I have to click this sky quest cape WAY to much >_<


All in all, beta buffing a ranger has definitely been a cool experience, I like it, but would like to have messed around with panic animal (oh well). solo is definitely still hard, even beta buffed. My ranger is currently lvl 50, and I love it.

[fishingme]

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

Funny, I strongly recommend playing a ranger. Especially in the Velious era.

Call of ___ line of spells boost your dps even higher than it already is; Call of the Predator is an awesome self/group/raid spell, boosting +ATK; Cinder Jolt finally giving them a reliable means of aggro reduction (regular Jolt sucks); panic animal allows for fear kiting of animals, allowing Rangers to solo places others wouldn't dream of (i.e. WW); Weaponshield giving you a nice invulnerability - generally long enough for a tank to regain aggro without you dying; and the nice ratio bows (i.e. 33/35) combined with Trueshot discipline adds up to 2 minutes of pure, unadulterated, slaughter.

Added on to the already amazing lineup of abilities and spells, such as SoW, camo, tracking, snare, root, lull, sneak, slow (via Earthcall from epic), regen (chloroplast)....yeah, Rangers are in their prime in Velious. And to make it even sweeter, the hybrid xp penalty should be going away in this era.

My previous post was purely for fun of a character. Personally I like lots of interaction and having plenty of things to do. I never got my ranger past 18 here, but i did have a 50 ranger in velious, they are definitely better in velious than kunark. But in reality they don't really hold a candle to some of the other classes. The bard I just find particularly interesting because of everything that you can do, Aoe mez, single target mez, twist 4-6songs, run speed, levitate+speed, aoe kite, swarm kite, and fear kite. A ranger isn't bad imho purely for the fact that there's very few and once you're raid level upgrades come quickly. Ranger is nice, but i prefer to be able to solo nearly anything i want in HS/old seb.

[dartaniun]

Easy way to fix the "needing to constantly click the dark cloak of the sky" is to just bind one of your directional keys (turn left or right, for instance) to trigger the cloak. It's all I do when i'm not chanter hasted

[abazaba]

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

Easy way to fix the "needing to constantly click the dark cloak of the sky" is to just bind one of your directional keys (turn left or right, for instance) to trigger the cloak. It's all I do when i'm not chanter hasted

^ Did the same thing for a while but I ended up binding the cloak to the same key I use for kick. Much less spammy imo and won't break invis on turning.

[Lartanin63]

Head-Hammer head helm
Ears- Diamondine earrings or waste some of your life getting sarnak earrings of stature.
Neck-Lava rune pendant
Shoulders-Crested pauldrons.
Arms - Mithril Vambraces or ivy etched arms.
Chest - Tree weave or regen bp rubi/ikky swap out.
Belt- FBSS/haste item
Legs- Mithril leggings.
Boots- Dwarven work boots.
Bracers- Hero bracer and Granite bracer. Tolans is good for later on just to make arrows.
Face - Mask of wurms
Hands- Guantlets of Potenence.
finger 55hp rings.
Back Hooded black cloak
Weapons I likes using a lammy and green jade broadsword at lower levels then get a woodsman staff and a swarmcaller later on.
Range - Rain caller is nice for the stats and range.

I like bumping strenght for more DPS. this is just my thought on ranger gearing. Not to expensive and easy to farm these items.

[Cecily]

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

^ Did the same thing for a while but I ended up binding the cloak to the same key I use for kick. Much less spammy imo and won't break invis on turning.

Yeah mine is bound to kick as well. Kick refreshes faster than the buff fades so it'll stay up constantly.

[Waedawen]

On my ranger I went with HP --> AC --> Resists

I'm sure the degree of twinking has something to do with it, but between a cof a fungi and a woodsman staff my ranger is -by far- my favorite character.

I don't know if I'm going to re-itemize him in the 50s, but I doubt it. I think strength is highly overrated for itemization, -especially for leveling-, but for base points it's the best.