People are in denial about Rangers being bad.

[condap99]

Nalken had a really impressive run of PD FTEs on his ranger too.

[Nexii]

Through the lens of classic all melee classes are bad.

Ranger is rather niche but weaponshield is a game changer for raiding

[Keebz]

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

A lot of people seem to bring up Harmony a lot. Harmony doesn't work in most places that you would need it (indoors).

Except the many raid zones (planes) which are all outdoors and full of casters that are hard to FD split.

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

I've yet to ever see a Ranger do something impressive with a bow, especially on Green.

FTE's, pulling casters, soloing lvl 30 mobs at lvl 10 (though gimmicky, it is occasionally useful).

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

They can't SoW indoors

Just like every other class that can SoW? At the very least they sit outside and SoW your crew for the FTE race, but you probably want them racing.

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

What is some of the utility they bring? ...their buffs usually don't stack with other classes, and ... IDK what else they have that could be considered good?

Snare, root, tracking, resist buffs, CoTP in Velious, etc.

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

...The ability to pull aggro and die?

For raids, this is actually really useful, for 1) ripping / dirty tagging the raid target single from the train 2) building up aggro via weapon shield during a tank switch.

For leveling group content, they can just tank and not die.

[7thGate]

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

A lot of people seem to bring up Harmony a lot. Harmony doesn't work in most places that you would need it (indoors).

I've yet to ever see a Ranger do something impressive with a bow, especially on Green.

What is some of the utility they bring? They can't SoW indoors, their buffs usually don't stack with other classes, and ... IDK what else they have that could be considered good? The ability to pull aggro and die?

Green criticism is potentially valid. Melee has issues in classic, and a lot of the things that make Rangers good came later. Verant realized bows were bad and made them about 8 times better over the course of Kunark and Velious (not even kidding, Rangers got double damage at 51, then a two minute duration more than double damage discipline, then their best easily obtainable 350 range bow/arrow combo went from 26/45 to 38/36). The result is that they go from awful to actually quite good.

If you've never had a chance to see a Ranger do something impressive with a bow, I'll just leave this here: https://wiki.project1999.com/File:Ranger_bazzt_zzzt.png . Guess which one's the ranger.

[Nexii]

On fights that last 1-2 mins or so Ranger can top DPS with Trueshot. Shorter fights Rogues and Wizards do better. Longer fights Rogues catch back up. That's kind of a niche fight length though since it means classic mob HP pool with a moderate raid size of 20-30.

They're also a top tier pvp class

[cd288]

Pre-50 Rangers can tank pretty effectively

[Arteker]

I dont know if rogean implemented the final hybrid patch.But if it was Active , Ranger dps stop being a joke to become realy realy good with high end gear and a 2hander.

[fuckshit22]

rangers are better on red.

[Tethler]

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

I’m sure all of those threads from 20 years ago claiming Rangers sucked are all hogwash and it was just because people didn’t know how to play a video game 20 years ago.

I’m sure Verant agreeing with the player base and later buffing Rangers in numerous ways was just a coincidence.

I’m sure the dozens of Rangers I’ve grouped with are just bad players, and that .01% of Rangers are actually good — maybe not as good as a Warrior or Bard, but at least almost as good as a Shaman’s pet.

Even if only .01% of rangers are good, that's still .01% better than anything RecondoJoe is playing.

[Baler]

Rangers are fun and gud at the end of velious and in luclin/PoP.. heh

But during classic.
Dead Rangers Everywhere!
Dead Rangers Everywhere!
Dead Rangers Everywhere!