Ranger solo

[Wiley]

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

Bows...

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[Ivory]

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

You use a bow in group as dps? lol.

Leveling up I mostly soloed....

Around 20-30 I grouped a couple times and generally used melee. Though I would still bow stuff (like when pulling the mobs would get to the group with 70-80 percent life :P). or if people were OOM and needed to slow down pulls...I would go pull something for myself to bow down while I waited (since I can med while bowing).

Smaller groups though (duo with a mage, or team without a healer) I would hate-kite for the group (So no need for tank or healer). Flame lick and snare and run around bowing.

But solo is where I liked a lot. I made level 40 necromancers jealous of my ability to solo with a bow :P

Now that I'm 51, I would use my bow in a group to DPS as long as it is outdoors (since my proc works there). Double damage + procs + spells = not bad! I'm fairly sure I am stronger bowing than I am with melee....and if not, it is superrrr close.

Bows are insanely strong!!! I think the biggest realization of how strong I was was the other day when I teamed up with a level 59 shaman....we were playing around with giants.

I pulled some... and things were going fine....but then we started to get adds (and I was grabbing more I saw hehe). We had like 8 giants on us! The shaman was trying to root and slow and dot stuff....but he quickly ran oom....so I was flame licking to taunt off of him, running around, everything snared, bunched them up and was hitting them with my AEs (so much that the shaman got jealous and switched to his ae spell too).....the shaman almost died a couple times even o.O Under 30% life, where I ran to him and healed him out of low health agro....then kept moving and shooting....

Basically, I was dancing around them like they were nothing! 1 giant....10 giants...-shrug- no problem as long as I got arrows.

Maybe I should write an archery guide....

[Priceline]

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

Maybe I should write an archery guide....

I'm all for people playing the game how they want but please don't destroy the souls of others by doing that in groups.

If people wanted someone not knowing how to play there class and doing almost no dmg they could just invite an aoe kiting bard.

[Naethyn]

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

I'm all for people playing the game how they want but please don't destroy the souls of others by doing that in groups.

If people wanted someone not knowing how to play there class and doing almost no dmg they could just invite an aoe kiting bard.

Ivory is right. Bows are great dps. Ivory has a woushi bow which is an aoe proc. Imagine endless quad kiting never running oom. That is what this is and it works. Anyone who says different is just a sheep with no real context of what is actually going on. Just because this play style is outside your realm of what is possible doesn't mean it isn't efficient. Rangers are below Rogues, Warriors, and Monks for dps at the top end so dispel your belief that a bow can't work. It does. The art of archery is not just firing arrows - it is doing everything Ivory has described above.

[RDawg816]

I'm all for Ivory writing a guide. There are many ways to play EQ. That's one of the great things about EQ.

[Doctor Jeff]

Originally Posted by RDawg816 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I'm all for Ivory writing a guide. There are many ways to play EQ. That's one of the great things about EQ.

Naw, the only way to play EverQuest is to get bard Pl'd 1-60 and then AFK in the back of the raid until you retire. /s

[jolanar]

+1 for a guide. -1 if it requires an expensive bow at level 1.

[Ivory]

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

Ivory is right. Bows are great dps. ....

Rangers are below Rogues, Warriors, and Monks for dps at the top end so dispel your belief that a bow can't work. It does.

But!! Let's talk some numbers!!!

At 60, bow skill is 240.

Let's say you are in a decent guild and go to ToV and got a silver fang bow....

35/42....ok, nice bow.

Throw on some +8 arrows. ....ok, 43/42....yea, neat....but bows aren't like weapons, their damage is actually halved to compare to a sword.

21.5/42...ick....without double attack.

BUT, 51 means double damage. Back to 43/42 sword.

Trueshot.

Suddenly 240 skill goes to 269 (trueshot is a 12% increase is skillchecks) ....interesting.....

Oh, also that becomes an 86/42 weapon [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Rangers happen to also have some amazing haste items.....

Throw in some high dex (crits) and you have an archer throwing down some serious firepower for 2 minutes on an alpha raid boss!!

So, even throwing out all the stuff about archery being more useful in non traditional groups (mage pet tanking, ench pet tanking, druid pet tanking, shaman pet tanking...basically all the situations where stepping in to melee becomes a burden without a dedicated healer) ....throw out all of the advantaged of sustained damage without mana (if you have arrows, you can kill it....even stuff you shouldn't be able to, like the sand giant I soloed at level 20)......

If you want to have ONLY the conversation about "can a ranger competitively DPS with a bow in an ideal raid situation"....the answer is yes. ((Oh, and she will be doing it out of range of the AE fear and damage...so....that is pretty neat too)).


((And if you are using the best bow in the game, 43/45...with +8 arrows....you are swinging around a 102/45 sword that crits with 269 skill check :P))

[Wiley]

Sounds fun on paper and at max level with a good bow, what about leveling? Pre 51 a bow like raincaller with standard arrows is only doing like 11 ((20+arrow)/2) dmg before Dex/atk is added in right?

[Ivory]

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

Sounds fun on paper and at max level with a good bow, what about leveling? Pre 51 a bow like raincaller with standard arrows is only doing like 11 ((20+arrow)/2) dmg before Dex/atk is added in right?

The hardest levels with a 20 damage bow was 42-46 (likey up to 49 before bow of the huntsman starts to proc).

If you are still using a raincaller past 40....that is a bad idea :P You can almost solo the bow of the huntsman quest by 40 :P

The reasons were

1 ) TONS of arrows being used up with a faster bow! I was hunting kind of far away from town and just couldn't go too heavy on the arrows. I had to stay in wakening lands during this time....to try and hunt wuoshi....tolans bracer at 46 woulda fixed this problem.

2 ) DEX vs STR - this was before I knew that dex and str were bugged for archery on this server [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] Bows use str here....so my damage was suffering a LOT because of this.... Fear kiting tigeraptors was just so tempting.....though I did find myself using bows also (pulling back to my spot I would take them to 80-90% life before they got back to me).

Or if the king raptor, rapticor, would show up....using bows was pretty handy if I got too hurt.


If I were leveling up again and had actually focused on str (instead of sitting at 95 str most the time :P) ....it would have been even stronger than it already was. In firiona vie, I was making necromancers jealous of my soloing along the cliff :P